flag Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The last CHQ 2024 post

furled

Here is the last CHQ 2024 post. I did not realize I would write quite as much about the place, but it wasn’t easy to encapsulate it.

Often, I would wake up at about 3:30 in the morning and wander into the Presbyterian House library. I would check my e-mail, complete my Wordle, etc. It’s a small but interesting room, which has an array of significant photos on the walls, such as one of Thurgood Marshall at a podium in 1957, a few years after he was the primary lawyer to litigate Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, and a decade before he was named to SCOTUS.

Many presidents and future presidents appeared on the walls, and at least some photos were taken in Chautauqua. The picture above of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore was taken before the 1992 election.

FDR was there in 1917, 1919, 1929, and 1936; the picture was of him standing before a crowd, which suggests earlier in the list. His cousin Teddy was there in 1890, 1894, 1895, 1905, and 1914, before, during, and after his presidency. William McKinley was there in 1895 before he took office.

For some pictures, it was more challenging to ascertain if they were taken there. Ulysses S. Grant visited Chautauqua as President in 1875. Rutherford B. Hayes visited in 1889, well after his term in office. Garfield’s stop in 1880 was a year before his Presidency and death. Gerald R. Ford’s picture was a government issue; his appearance in 1964 was a decade before he became Commander-in-Chief.

Furled flag

When I wasn’t attending an event during the day, I often sat on the back porch of the 2nd floor of the Presbyterian house. It’s a lovely space with a small table. To my left, I could see Chautauqua Lake, which was lovely. Often, I could hear music from the amphitheater; sometimes, it was from a worship service, while other times, it would be the rehearsal for a show that would take place that night. Once, a program for kids took place, with young adults performing short plays the kids had written.

I would talk to the staff, mostly young people, who would clean the windows, sweep the floor, and unfurl the flag. This particular American flag on this porch got wrapped daily. Once, when my wife came out and unfurled it after it had been wrapped twice, a couple of hours later, it had furled five times. Meanwhile, the Presbyterian flag, made of a much heavier material, only furled once that week.

I have never seen so many American flags in a small community as in Chautauqua. CHQ considers itself part of a great American experiment, so one expects to listen to points of view that are divergent from one’s own.

This is not to say that everyone is on board. The Daily Chautauquan, which comes out six days a week and covers (previews then reviews) most of the significant events, carried a letter to the editor blasting CHQ for inviting former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to be in conversation with Julian Castro, HUD secretary under Obama, the day before my wife and I arrived.

There were many discussions about politics at mealtimes, largely because Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he wouldn’t run for re-election. A guy named Bill and I mused over Kamala Harris’ VP pick.

The penultimate day

My favorite time at Chautauqua was on Friday afternoon in the main quad. My wife told me there would be a Pete Seeger tribute on the green, which reminded me of a college main quad. It turned out that the performance was the day before. A couple, a guy on guitar and a woman on fiddle sang folk songs, and I sang a little harmony with them.

Then my wife and I returned to Presby House, where they served wine – before supper! – and a couple of young adults, the male clearly the son of a woman staying there, sang some songs. Eventually, they performed Country Roads, Take Me Home, and I sang harmony in the chorus, which made them happy. Then, someone else sang a Fleetwood Mac song. It was a fun time on our last afternoon at Chautauqua.

Reclaiming the American flag

More personal context

I’m working on a project, and that project is me. I’m working on reclaiming the American flag.

It isn’t easy, though. My family, to my recollection, never hung the flag outside the house. And there was never one outside of my grandmother’s house either.

Though I don’t recall ever discussing it with my parents when I grew up, I got the clear message from my father that the overt signs of patriotism were not his thing. I’m convinced that it was a function of bigotry he experienced in the military in 1945 and 1946 and dealing with racism subsequently.

By the time I was in high school, there was an “America, love it or leave it” mentality, which I associated with literal flag waving.

The BCHS incident

When I was in eleventh grade, there was about a week when we didn’t have the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker. So one day, my homeroom teacher, Harvey, decided our class should do so. I refused to stand. That “liberty and justice for all” stuff, I felt, was a lie. The face of the homeroom teacher grew increasingly red as he repeated the request, and I remained seated.

During the first period, trigonometry, this burly adult sat a couple of seats behind me. I figured he was evaluating the newish math teacher. In fact, it was the new principal, Dr. K.

I met with him and my father, who he had called, either during lunch or after school. Dr. K asked if I were an adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses since the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that “expelling a student who doesn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance … violates the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and religion.” That ruling, coincidentally, was eighty years ago on this very date. (It reversed a SCOTUS ruling in Minersville School District v. Gobitis only three years earlier.)

No, I said. We worked out a compromise that I would stand for the Pledge but didn’t have to say it. Oddly, in twelfth grade, as president of the student, I recited it over the loudspeaker. By then, I had decided the words were aspirational rather than factual.

I like red, white, and blue.

I should be clear that I’ve always liked the actual flag. They were going to add a star and stripe for every state that joined the union. The fact that they pivoted back to thirteen stripes, I thought, was very clever.

I’ve been to Arlington National Cemetery and the military cemetery in North Carolina where my parents are buried, and I find the rows of flags quite moving.

SCOTUS has recognized flag burning as protected speech. While I agree with the concept philosophically, it bothers me when I see it, and I would not do so myself.

Indeed, I’m more aware of 4 U.S. Code § 8 – Respect for flag than most people who claim to revere it, for instance:

d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. (i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. I came across this pin of a flag with a cross on it; this Christo-Americanism I found highly unsettling.

And the literal embrace of the flag by djt I find utterly grotesque. (Does the fact that his birthday is June 14 somehow create a rationale in his mind?)

And yet

When the US was preparing to go to war in Iraq, and I actively opposed it in the six months before I began, the peaceniks were dubbed not “real” lovers of their country.

Still, if I Google “liberals reclaiming the flag” I find articles like this from USA Today (2018) and this from Politico (2020) and this from the New York Times (2022). I agree with most of the sentiments contained therein.

Maybe this would work for me. From NPR: “Many have chosen to fly the flag next to other symbols to give it more personal context. For some, that means raising the Stars and Stripes along with a ‘Make American Great Again’ banner. For others, the American flag is flying alongside a gay pride banner or Black Lives Matter sign.” OK, not the MAGA sign, but…

Imgur as a source of information

Martha’s Vineyard immigrants

In late September, I was perusing a friend’s Facebook page who had posted, “I stand with the Iranian protests.” One of their friends indicated that they had gotten their information about it from TikTok and Imgur because they didn’t trust news outlets.

Oh, I’ll own it. I had no freaking idea what Imgur was. It “is an image hosting and sharing site, favoured by users of social media and social news sites including Reddit, Twitter, and Digg because of its ease of use and flexibility.” At first glance, it looks so… random. Pets, ads, dance videos, and various tweets.

I searched Iran and #Iran, but found nothing pertinent. But Iranian gave me 118 hits, only some of which were relevant.

Still, this fascinated me. I had seen several pieces in the New York Times, such as this one. Women Take Center Stage in Antigovernment Protests Shaking Iran. “Women have been casting off their legally required head scarves, forming the primary image of the protests. But grievances against a repressive regime go far beyond the hijab.”

This is not to say that one can’t find important stories almost anywhere. I just don’t see myself using Imgur as my go-to for the latest news.

DeSantis

On the other hand, Imgur is the answer to the question, “How did an image of a fake Massachusetts flag end up in a brochure for Martha’s Vineyard migrants?”

From the Boston Globe. Two summers ago, Will Bodine of Pittsfield, MA whipped up a flag redesign in “‘upwards of 10 minutes’ on his computer. The concept was simple: a blue shield emblazoned with the official state flower — the mayflower — encircled by six blue stars, all splashed against a white backdrop.

“Bodine… shared it on Facebook. He also uploaded it to Imgur, an image-hosting website, where, until recently, it had only been viewed a few times.

“Before nearly 50 migrants arrived from Texas on planes chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, lawyers said they were handed brochures containing erroneous information about cash assistance and other benefits they would receive in Massachusetts.

“While it remains unclear who created the pamphlets, they included a rudimentary map of the state, a picture of a lighthouse, a photo of a sign reading ‘Massachusetts Welcomes You’ — and Bodine’s obscure reimagining of the state flag, rather than the real one.”

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver noted this event in the first five minutes of his 9/25/22 program.

I suppose this gets to my point about checking reliable sources of information. As Bodine noted, “’No one had seen this flag until some idiot staffer for DeSantis or whoever’ stumbled across it… ‘I cannot fathom why they would use the wrong one.'”