My Reaction to Vowell's essay

While I was reading Sarah Vowell's essay, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, I appreciated how she used sarcasm to make her essay a bit light-hearted.  Even though the essay was about serious topics.  I ended up finding the essay very enjoyable to read.  However, it was not only the sarcastic tone alone that made it so enjoyable, it actually made me think about the history, the current events, and the politics of not only this country, but the entire world.

In this blog, there is actually only one particular section in the essay that I am willing to write about.  That section is when Vowell has a conversation with "the record collectors of Bosnia" (Vowell 1061).  When I read this brief narrative, I realized Vowell included it in order to prove some point.  That point is that there is actually a fine line between patriotism created from appreciating culture and patriotism that leads "to exclusion, hate, and murder" (Vowell 1062).  The Bosnian record collectors seem to denounce any sign of nationalism as being evil.  They do this because they had (possibly) witnessed a civil war in Yugoslavia.  When Vowell tells the record collectors of her thoughts of Memphis, she seems to say that nationalism does not always can lead to horrible violence.  She even says that when she thinks about the musicians "who had walked its streets", she "was proud to feel...patriotic" (Vowell 1062).  As I read her feelings of Memphis, I realized that Vowell is trying to say that nationalism can exist without violence.