Lee Greenwood

Thursday

Matt McDonald

Lee Greenwood is Trump’s court bard

The stage lights flicker. The MAGA faithful whoop at the first tinkle of piano keys. They’ve been here a hundred times. They know what’s coming. If tomorrow all the things were gone I’d worked for all my life And I had to start again With just my children and my wife “God Bless the USA” has been through several iterations since it first appeared on Lee Greenwood’s third album, You’ve Got a Good Love Comin’. It was a Gold-certified single in May 1984 and the soundtrack for a short film about Ronald Reagan, which was shown at that summer’s Republican National Convention. Greenwood performed the song at the 1988 RNC – and it resurged in popularity after the First Gulf War and the 9/11 attacks.

Friday

Bill Kauffman

Picnicking in the park on July 4

Our July 4 was low on bombast and high on fraternity this year. There were no stealth-bomber flyovers, no tanks treading ominously down Main Street or any other minatory displays of military hardware straight out of a Soviet-era Moscow May Day. Even Lee Greenwood left us alone. I’m told Washington was another story. For the first time since Covid, “Picnic in the Park” was back in Batavia. This much-loved festival of food, music, and smiling, “hey, how ya doin’?” encounters fills the bosky park across the street from the New York State School for the Blind. (One of Batavia’s many ironies is that the best view in town is from the blind school.) For years, my wife, daughter and I manned the Landmark Society’s strawberry shortcake stand at Picnic in the Park.