The Colorado sky. The Bishop’s Garden at the Cathedral Church in Washington. Redwoods, Red Alert 2 (but not 3), red Solo® cups, Red Lobster. The ability to take anything seriously or unseriously. The F-16, the M16. The very size of the place. Southern Gothic, Midwestern blondes, bluegrass, the Christmas-movie genre, nonholy holidays. The ability to make Asian cuisine taste good. Jack Daniel’s, Jeff Daniels; Stormy Daniels’s brief 2010 campaign for David Vitter’s Senate seat on behalf of the people of Louisiana. Coleslaw. Twentieth-century Jewish-American literature. Twentieth-century new(ish) American journalism. Auden. Lawns. The liberal-arts college for all its sins. Business brio — a readiness to flirt with failure; an unwillingness to espouse it. Ideological polarization (it’s nontoxic). Also, the rowdiness and absurdity and ritual of American politics, and its hyperbolic language (these are vital signs). Your revival of the ancient Greek virtue of xenia. Corn bread.