BY LYNN HANRAHAN
Los Alamos

The Fourth of July reminds me of my father.  He spent the early hours of every Fourth looking for the masking tape to attach a little flag on a wooden stick to the front porch post.  No flagpole or anything else — all the parents in the neighborhood were children of the Great Depression who watched their pennies.

They had fought in the Second World War and lived true to the ideal that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself.  Not to celebrate the Fourth would never have crossed their minds despite the turmoil of the late sixties.

One of the kids asked yesterday if we should celebrate this year.  I looked at her.  The road is always long.  The troubles endless.  There is no place I would rather be though.