Opinion

Remember the Bicentennial? Celebrating might be even harder for America’s 250th birthday.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is the Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University.

“You’ll remember this day forever,” my mother said. It was July 4, 1976, the morning of the Bicentennial.

“What am I going to remember?” I asked her.

“The meaning of freedom!” she said, her eyes misting as they often did when my mother — an immigrant from Germany — spoke about her adopted country.