the flag the cross and the station wagon

There was a place name not far from his old neighborhood where a rebellious enslaved man was hanged and tarred, his body displayed in an iron cage as a warning. He laments that some of the New England revolutionaries were slaveholders. As he says, “I came by my patriotism honestly.”īut much later in life this story takes on a different meaning to McKibben. In 1976, his scout troop raised the flag over Lexington Green at the start of the Bicentennial celebration. McKibben finds his country, his religion and the suburban lifestyle of his youth to be so flawed that he’s ready to divorce much of his past.Īmerica’s birthing was a glorious story, “clean and brave” - noble men rebelling against an “unjust and arbitrary power” in the name of freedom and equality and self-determination. His latest book is a slim cri de coeur about the rot at the base of his biographical foundations. As is sometimes said about effective environmentalists, he’ll make a great ancestor.

One day, perhaps, he’ll win the real Nobel to go with the so-called alternative Nobel, which he’s already been awarded, the Right Livelihood Award. He won the Gandhi Peace Award and the Thomas Merton Award. Growing up, he actually sang “Kumbaya” around a campfire - “always earnestly,” he says.

He’s passionate about solving problems others have given up on, about building a better world and particularly about climate change, the issue that has made him the Paul Revere of alarm about our fevered planet. In his writings, his many speeches and bullhorn exhortations, Bill McKibben comes across as one of the least cynical people on the battlefield of public opinion. THE FLAG, THE CROSS, AND THE STATION WAGON A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened By Bill McKibben

The flag the cross and the station wagon