July 4th, Provincetown, MA 1983, by Joel Meyerowitz paired with Birkenstock Multi-Stripe Arizona Sandals.

An idle walk through Provincetown, MA, some thirty years ago spawned this image of the stars and stripes. Great American photographer Joel Meyerowitz, en route to the parade grounds, stumbled upon an American flag bigger than the house behind it, a larger-than-life expression of patriotism, an antique with its 48 stars – emphatic, brilliant.

“We tend to sleepwalk through our lives, to drift,” Meyerowitz once said. “What inspires me is a response to that sharpened sense of being here now – that is the underpinning of my work.”

So today, with so much to celebrate, I would like to pause for a moment and aspire to be an acute American like Meyerowitz.