thedrifter
08-26-07, 07:52 AM
James Vesely / Times editorial page editor
The flag and I: a summer romance
Seattle Times -
Every Memorial Day, I put our American flag out in its support brace on the front porch. I give it a snappy salute and leave the flag to wave and whisper its way through the summer. Around Labor Day, or later if weather allows, I take the flag in, case it, and let the winter blow.
I am the only person on the block who does this. A neighbor down the way used to put up a summer flag, but he was a former Navy aviator and since he moved away, my flag remains alone except for a few small ones that rise like perennials every Fourth of July. The flag is not large — 5 feet by about 3 feet — but you can see it from a long way off.
The strange thing about the flag is that not everyone knows exactly what it is. I heard one person, giving a repairman directions to my house, say, "it's the house with the big school flag in front."
Another visitor said, "I remember that flag from camp."
American flags are ubiquitous, but maybe not in all the right ways. We pledge to them at ballgames and see them on cemetery plots and on the shoulders of soldiers and Marines photographed in war. Everything else about the flag seems to be background noise.
Although flag burnings are now very rare, Congress continues to wrestle with the question of the flag as a sacred symbol. The most recent vote in Congress failed by one senator to make burning the flag a desecration and a crime. That was in 2006.
But watch the flag come out in the next presidential-campaign season which began around Memorial Day. Flags and buntings will be the color exclamations to every ceremony on the stump. I wish it were more than a prop.
A flag doesn't seem to sit well at Thanksgiving but it sure is the soul of summer. Memorial Day, through Flag Day, then on to Independence Day and finally Labor Day — all are the days of summer and the days of the red, white and blue. The days and evenings stretch to the blue horizon and evoke both memory and comfort. Sometimes late in the day I hear the flag on the porch flap and snap with the coming night winds.
Early this month, two Russian minisubmarines, driven by scientists and sailors, planted Russian flags at the bottom of the sea somewhere near the North Pole. As with Coronado or Columbus, planting a flag is the equivalent of staking a claim.
"It was so lovely down there," polar explorer Artur Chilingarov told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
"If a hundred or a thousand years from now someone goes down to where we were, they will see the Russian flag," he added.
Before The Seattle Times Editorial Board, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen called the Russian voyage "theatrics," but also noted the Coast Guard vessel Healy was then steaming north to help plot the curvatures of the land beneath the ice cap.
The American flag as our instrument of both our courage and our folly comes with its heart on our sleeves. For men and women of my generation it is such a profound, silent statement of who we are that it doesn't need speech or demonstrations. It just needs to quietly wave on the porch and oversee the freedoms of summer.
Ellie
The flag and I: a summer romance
Seattle Times -
Every Memorial Day, I put our American flag out in its support brace on the front porch. I give it a snappy salute and leave the flag to wave and whisper its way through the summer. Around Labor Day, or later if weather allows, I take the flag in, case it, and let the winter blow.
I am the only person on the block who does this. A neighbor down the way used to put up a summer flag, but he was a former Navy aviator and since he moved away, my flag remains alone except for a few small ones that rise like perennials every Fourth of July. The flag is not large — 5 feet by about 3 feet — but you can see it from a long way off.
The strange thing about the flag is that not everyone knows exactly what it is. I heard one person, giving a repairman directions to my house, say, "it's the house with the big school flag in front."
Another visitor said, "I remember that flag from camp."
American flags are ubiquitous, but maybe not in all the right ways. We pledge to them at ballgames and see them on cemetery plots and on the shoulders of soldiers and Marines photographed in war. Everything else about the flag seems to be background noise.
Although flag burnings are now very rare, Congress continues to wrestle with the question of the flag as a sacred symbol. The most recent vote in Congress failed by one senator to make burning the flag a desecration and a crime. That was in 2006.
But watch the flag come out in the next presidential-campaign season which began around Memorial Day. Flags and buntings will be the color exclamations to every ceremony on the stump. I wish it were more than a prop.
A flag doesn't seem to sit well at Thanksgiving but it sure is the soul of summer. Memorial Day, through Flag Day, then on to Independence Day and finally Labor Day — all are the days of summer and the days of the red, white and blue. The days and evenings stretch to the blue horizon and evoke both memory and comfort. Sometimes late in the day I hear the flag on the porch flap and snap with the coming night winds.
Early this month, two Russian minisubmarines, driven by scientists and sailors, planted Russian flags at the bottom of the sea somewhere near the North Pole. As with Coronado or Columbus, planting a flag is the equivalent of staking a claim.
"It was so lovely down there," polar explorer Artur Chilingarov told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
"If a hundred or a thousand years from now someone goes down to where we were, they will see the Russian flag," he added.
Before The Seattle Times Editorial Board, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen called the Russian voyage "theatrics," but also noted the Coast Guard vessel Healy was then steaming north to help plot the curvatures of the land beneath the ice cap.
The American flag as our instrument of both our courage and our folly comes with its heart on our sleeves. For men and women of my generation it is such a profound, silent statement of who we are that it doesn't need speech or demonstrations. It just needs to quietly wave on the porch and oversee the freedoms of summer.
Ellie