This Fourth of July, in parades across the country, you’ll likely see Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty together, smiling, waving, maybe holding hands. Their jaunty appearance as America’s Odd Couple is as predictable as the parades’ antique cars and marching bands. In fact, the idea of them as a twosome dates back more than a century to when Uncle Sam and (a fairly fierce looking) Lady Liberty first teamed up to sell war bonds and boost enlistment in World War I, and later World War II.

Russia said Monday it will not be sending kind words to mark the Independence Day holiday in the United States.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that congratulations “can hardly be considered appropriate” and cited what he called the “unfriendly policies” of the United States.

The U.S. has opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine, sending weapons and helping train Ukrainian forces while also leading efforts to impose sanctions against Russia.

Independence Day has arrived as the United States is rocked by hearings over the Jan. 6 insurrection, awash in turmoil over high court rulings on abortion and guns and struggling to maintain the bonds that keep it together.

Yet many also see cause to celebrate Monday: the deadly danger of the pandemic has lessened and, despite its fault lines, America’s democracy survives.

The Fourth of July is a day of summer weather, barbeques and national hot dog eating competitions in America as the nation celebrates its independence.

But few people will know that the tune of the US national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner”, a song sung proudly at every Super Bowl, actually originally came from England.

The melody to which Francis Scott Key set the lyrics was derived from “To Anacreon in Heaven”, the constitutional song of the Anacreontic Society, a private gentleman’s club in London.

The national anthem of the United States is full of surprises, writes Mark Clague, a professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, in “O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

Nearly everything about the 208-year-old anthem – from its meaning to how people sing it – has changed over time. Like America itself, the song is always evolving, Professor Clague tells the Monitor. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed. 

You point out that the first line is a question, not a declaration. Can you explain?

I’m a singer living in Nashville, Tennessee — Music City, USA. But at age 64, you won’t find me singing at the honky-tonks. You’re much more likely to hear me singing in my church choir or perhaps a ballpark.

That’s because I’ve sung the national anthem in public for 20 years. I even accomplished one of my lifelong dreams: to sing for my beloved Chicago Cubs and nearly 40,000 fans at a packed Wrigley Field.

That single performance turned into multiyear, cross-country quest to sing the anthem at all the ballparks in the Chicago Cubs organization, which I completed in 2018.

For all the pomp and circumstance of its presentation, there is something admirably humble about America’s national anthem. Britain’s anthem is cartoonish, with its repeated entreaties to “save” an already-well-secured monarch and its insistence that God is destined to “scatter” the “knavish” enemies of the crown. France’s anthem is utopian, with all those references to the “child of the fatherland,” the “day of glory,” and the prospect of “impure blood” watering the fields. But America’s? America’s has about it that quality of the unknown. From the outset, it poses questions.

On this Fourth of July, it’s worth pondering the true meaning of patriotism.

It is not the meaning propounded by the “America first” crowd, who see the patriotic challenge as securing our borders.

For most of its existence America has been open to people from the rest of the world fleeing tyranny and violence.

Nor is the meaning of patriotism found in the ravings of those who want America to be a white Christian nation.

America’s moral mission has been greater inclusion – equal citizenship for Native Americans, Black people, women and LGBTQ+ people.

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the nation’s birthday and reflect on the values that have sustained the country in the nearly 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Americans’ views vary when it comes to how they see the United States’ standing in the world and the state of its democracy. Here are key findings from Pew Research Center surveys:

More people flew out of airports in the United States on Sunday — 2.46 million according to the Transportation Security Administration — than on any other day so far this year. The Fourth of July holiday is expected to be even busier, with Hopper, a travel booking app, predicting that nearly 13 million passengers will fly to, from and within the United States this weekend.

The question for many travelers is whether they can trust airlines to get them where they want to go on time.