Flag Day 2007 :Awards versus inherited stuff.

I see a few flags out for Flag Day. New Jersey is a pretty flaggy place. People display not only American flags, but also banners (usually faded) as decorations. Front lawn and garden decorations are pretty ubiquitous here in South Jersey. Some of the McMansion type homes have elaborate décor adorning their estates. Some of the weary little houses keep seasonal trim up all year round. Our flag is a large cloth one designed for a tall flagpole, but our pole here is just a short one we attached to our front step. That's ok. This flag has been displayed in a lot different places, and with a sense of great gratitude for being born American.

I'm not certain that people who have had to earn their way into US citizenship are not even more emotionally attached to the flag. Things earned are like awards, where things inherited are comfortable heirlooms, there before you received them-- and taken for granted pretty much. Sometimes I think we comfortable Americans will have to have our flag torn from our possession to really "get" its value.

I dread what would happen to us if we really lost a war and lost our freedom. We might be like Paris Hilton in jail-- just crumbling in the face of what most of the rest of the world lives in as a matter of course: bare essentials, no freedoms, and often with no reason to expect a good tomorrow. We are not used to being "less fortunate."

Now I will go check out my few "flags" in the garden. I always called them Iris, but some people call them flags. I don't have many-- they last a short time and look so unfortunate when they wither and turn brown. Then there are the tall green spears needing to be there to get the nourishment they need for next year's brief show. I only have them because they were planted sometime by someone in our woods and I dug them up to see if I could make them bloom in a sunnier location.

I have lots of things (like flags) that I didn't earn, but just sort of inherited: someone earned them long ago-- the people who lived here before put them in at some time in the hundred years this property has been occupied by owners. I find perennials, but also dig up evidence of old coal fires-- their ashes with odd bits of unburned coal-- bones of large animals (were they hunters, or did their horse die, or did they bury a PERSON here?), bits of broken glass and crockery and some whole vessels-- cobalt glass, small crocks. Trash service is a new wrinkle, historically speaking. There are digs that tell the stories of the old town.

Near the compost pile there is a nice heavy white slab of marble -- the size of a door threshold-- with the broken base of an ornamental brass fixture in one end. I have uncovered most of it -- not yet dug it up, but it looks like something good. It's something I could not earn right now-- it would be too expensive! But someone once earned it and then dumped it.

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