Oh, Say Can You See Clearly?

“Oh, say can you see.” Many of us begin to feel a lump forming in our throat at the first musical strains and hearing that phrase. The late Paul Harvey explained our reaction to the National Anthem. He said, “It is our song as an American.” As we stand and sing at ballgames the lyrics we memorized as school children, even with a lump in our throat, the words “float over our minds and our lips and we don’t even realize what we are singing.” It is as Harvey concluded, “We’ve never really thought about what it means.”