Founding Ideals in Modern Times: Washington, Jefferson, and Civic Duty
I have a flagpole tucked into the front garden, framed by rosebushes and a stubborn row of hostas. Most weeks it flies the Stars and Stripes, but a few times a year I raise a historic flag. Sometimes it is the rattlesnake coiled on a yellow field, sometimes the circle of thirteen stars, and occasionally a weathered regimental banner I inherited from my grandfather, who kept it sealed in a cedar trunk. I do it with care, not for spectacle. What Flying a Historic Flag Means t
Thomas Jefferson’s Vision and the Responsibilities of Citizenship
A few springs back, I swapped my usual porch flag for a weathered thirteen-star circle I found at a small-town antique store. The fabric had that soft hand only cotton gets after decades of care, and the blue field had shifted to the color of dusk. That weekend, my next-door neighbor, a Marine veteran, stopped by with his morning coffee and asked about it. We stood under that little swirl of stars trading stories, his about Fallujah, mine about a great-great-grandfather who
Ancestral Echoes: Keeping Family Heritage Alive in Modern America
On a windy Saturday a few autumns ago, I hauled a weathered wooden pole from my garage, the kind my grandfather used when he flew the flag outside his farmhouse. The cloth I clipped to it was not the current Stars and Stripes, but a reproduction of the thirteen star circle. I had spent the night before resewing a loose seam and steaming the folds straight. My neighbor, a retired teacher with a gentle manner and sharp memory, paused on Confederate Flag Store his morning
Beyond Borders: Flags as Symbols of Identity and Belonging
The first flag I ever raised was a faded 3 by 5 nylon rectangle on a squeaky telescoping pole. It was my grandfather’s, rescued from the back of a garage where it had slumped under fishing rods. The halyard bit my palms as I pulled, the metal clips snapped, and the fabric climbed into morning light. Neighbors paused on their walks. A kid on a scooter gave a quiet nod. Nothing else changed on our street, yet the place felt more anchored, as if we had pinned a story to the sk