Oh, Say, Can you See.

I had an interesting night tonight. I live in between two widowed women. One is a busy bee and never sits still. The other one, I'll go weeks without seeing her. I figure as long as I see lights on at night I know not to worry. But I've engaged in plenty conversation with the busy bee over the time we've had our home and you could say I'm comfortable with her...

I don't watch the news. I don't know who fought in WW1 or who won the Cold War (that's a war right?) and I could probably barely pick our Vice President out in a lineup but I'll say this...a worn and tattered American Flag bothers me.

My busy bee neighbor has a flag pole in the front yard right between our houses. I consider it a shared flag pole because I get to enjoy it too. Well her flag has seen better days. It will get caught on the tree and stay stuck for days and it's colors no longer shout with pride what they represent. I figure it's only fitting that coming up on the 4th of July that I take it upon myself to replace it.

(At least I waited for her to get home to ask for her permission!)

What a thrill brining that flag back up the pole. By now it was dusk and the only thing more fitting would have been if someone was next to me either with fireworks or singing "My Country Tis of Thee." (And of course one of the clips broke so I replaced both with metal clips from a Bose headphone case. Worked perfectly.)

British-born scholar Felicity Paxton said, "Both people who support the war, and oppose the war, wave and wear the American flag and therein lies it's power. An effective symbol is one that ordinary people can engage at multiple levels and for multiple reasons."

So there you have it. I'm just an ordinary person who would get wrong every history question you asked me. I'd be the guy on Jay Leno's 'Street Interviews' that you'd make fun of. But there is something about the flag I respect on multiple levels for unknown reasons. The fact that you can still well up during the siging of the National Anthem during a Brewer game gives me hope that you can have a strong sense of pride and emotion towards your country without having ever fought or knowing about it's history. Because really, for that moment, you, along with thousands of other fans, are connected not by race, blood or belief, but the fact that we are all AMERICANS. (I almost cried as I typed that)

(random tid bit about our flag...the current design was from an 18 yr. old in high school who received a B- for it)

(also...notice in the above pic how I trimmed the bush to allow for proper lighting of the flag at night.)