Celebrating a national anniversary is kind of similar to looking ahead at a milestone birthday, with good, bad, and sometimes ugly aspects. Linda Engelhard writes that she is still breathing but not everything in her past is cause for a party. She and her husband John escaped snowmageddon last winter and were heading toward the coast of Georgia, surrounded by Civil War history on the way. Without snow to shovel, they began to contemplate what a genuine celebration of the Declaration of Independence might look like for us. “We love this country. That said, we also love justice, honesty, kindness, generosity—the values we grew up with that seem to be less embraced by our country in 2026. We settled on a quest to celebrate by learning more history and visiting 250 historic sites by the end of the year.”