Long may it wave

As many of you know, I have a fondness for flags. 

Momma surprised me yesterday with a stand to hold my growing collection of flags.

So far I have:

• two different pirate flags (Arr!)
• 50-star United States flag
• Episcopal flag
• Northern Arizona University flag

and Momma found more for me which should arrive any day now:

• another pirate flag!
• rainbow flag
• Arizona flag
• Ohio flag
• Pennsylvania flag

All of which makes me think of the song, Freak Flag, from Shrek: The Musical:

Let your freak flag wave
Let your freak flag fly
Never take it down, never take it down
Raise it way up high!
Let your freak flag fly!
Let it fly, fly, fly!

All I ask is a tall ship

I am now firmly convinced that Momma's friend Jen can crochet anything. Take a look at this beauty, which puts me in mind of the poem Sea-Fever.

http://justforfun2291.blogspot.com/

Sea-Fever is a poem by 20th century English Poet Laureate John Masefield which includes the line "all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."

Captain James T. Kirk first quoted from Sea-Fever in TOS: The Ultimate Computer to Leonard McCoy.

Kirk quoted from the poem again in ST: The Final Frontier while aboard a shuttlecraft approaching the Enterprise-A in one of the best scenes from Star Trek movies: 

Kirk: All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer by. 
McCoy: Melville... 
Spock: ...John Masefield. 
McCoy: Are you sure about that?
Spock: I am well versed in the classics, Doctor. 
McCoy: Then how come you don't know "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"?

And finally, Quark paraphrased it in DS9: Little Green Men while aboard his ship Quark's Treasure, saying "all I ask is a tall ship...and a load of contraband to fill her with."

I agree with Quark and Jen's ship needs a tiny pirate flag.

Sea-Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

http://craftyiscool.blogspot.com

Jokingly, I asked if she could crochet me a zeppelin. Then I found this.

Oh Jen....

Nothing up my sleeve

What actually hides under Edwardian sleeves.

My dear Miss Sparrow and I (being the Perfectly Awful Girls that we are) were discussing a recent news article about literary tattoos.

That lead us to talking about the tattoos adorning her illustrious (illustrated?) ancestor's back.

I, of course, had my tummy signed by Evil Wil Wheaton - which is pretty darned permanent in my case.

But she and I started discussing literary tattoos and what we would get IF we were to get one.

Personally, I would probably get something from the Betsy-Tacy or Little House books. Or Spock's, "Live Long and Prosper." Or maybe my flag.

Or maybe, "My ♥ belongs to Momma."

Miss Sparrow declined to say because she was afraid I'd publish it here (true), but I think she secretly wants an "I ♥ Joe Willard" somewhere.

Any suggestions?

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.

The original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published Sept. 8, 1892 in the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion. Written by Francis Bellamy, the Pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point and designed it to be recited in 15 seconds.

Bellamy's original Pledge read: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In 1923, the National Flag Conference called for the words "my Flag" to be changed to "the Flag of the United States," so that new immigrants would not confuse loyalties between their birth countries and the United States. The words "of America" were added a year later.

The United States Congress officially recognized the Pledge for the first time on June 22, 1942, in the following form: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Louis A. Bowman was the first to initiate the addition of "under God" to the Pledge. He stated that the words came from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address although not all manuscript versions of the Gettysburg Address contain the words "under God."

Congress passed the necessary legislation and President Eisenhower signed the bill adding the phrase "under God" into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.

If it happens, it happens... We can't stop living

Since I just wrote about Yellow Fever on Monday, I was interested to read that Walter Reed Army Medical Center held a ceremony today in preparation for its September closing. The hospital has treated the nation’s war wounded since 1909.

During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793,
Philadelphia authorities sent carriages around the city
to pick up the dead and dying.

Major Walter Reed, M.D., was a U.S. Army physician who in 1900 led the team that discovered that Yellow Fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, not humans.

(Sadly, Reed underwent an emergency appendectomy and died of complications within those same hospital walls in 1902.)

Although the last North American epidemic of Yellow Fever occurred in New Orleans in 1905, yellow fever epidemics in North America have caused about 100,000-150,000 deaths through the years.

(The New Orleans epidemic of 1853, featured in the upcoming Cécile Rey American Girl book series, killed 9,000 people.)

A 1793 outbreak in Philadelphia resulted in the deaths of several thousand people and forced the administration to flee the city, including president George Washington.

A church in Charleston, S.C. suffered 308 Yellow Fever deaths in 1858, reducing its congregation by half.

In 1873, Shreveport, La., lost almost a quarter of its population to Yellow Fever, and in 1878, about 20,000 people died in an epidemic in the Mississippi River Valley.

In 1878 Memphis was hit with an unusually large amount of rain, which led to an increase in the mosquito population. The result was a huge outbreak of Yellow Fever. A ship took people fleeing Memphis hoping to escape the disease, but the ship was not allowed to dock anywhere due to fear of Yellow Fever. The ship roamed the Mississippi for the next two months before unloading her passengers.

Signal flag called the "Yellow Jack."

Yellow Fever was sometimes known as Yellow Jack. Why? A ship flying a yellow flag meant that there was illness aboard. Often this was used to trick pirates away from potential targets.

Huh. I thought a jack was a pirate flag but turns out it's a small flag flown from any boat or ship.

Anyway, thanks for a job well done Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

 

My smelling salts again, please

This time I think I truly shall swoon.

Porter Grand, the co-author of my aforementioned Little Women and Werewolves, has put her stamp of approval on My bookmobile flag!

I am off to find more books for the "fiercest of book collections." 

Any recommendations? 

Under the brave black flag I fly

Miss Sparrow liked My flag idea but gave me a couple of suggestions.

So here we have it!

Do you think this is a Worthy Flag for the first floating bookmobile?

Now, to find Betsy Ross....

Come Josefina, in my flying machine

Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

I think this New Business Venture has gone to My Dear Miss Sparrow's head.

I walked into the library today to show her my idea for our floating bookmobile's flag and found her humming this song: 

Oh! Say! Let us fly, dear
Where, kid? To the sky, dear
Oh you flying machine
Jump in, Miss Josephine
Ship ahoy! Oh joy, what a feeling
Where, boy? In the ceiling
Ho, High, Hoopla we fly
To the sky so high

Come Josephine in my flying machine
Going up she goes! Up she goes!
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam
In the air she goes! There she goes!
Up, up, a little bit higher
Oh! My! The moon is on fire
Come Josephine in my flying machine
Going up, all on, Goodbye!

Alfred Bryan / Fred Fischer, 1910

Hmm, I wonder if she'd like to be addressed as Josefina?

She had a cozy little face,with half a dozen tiny moles. Her eyes were black and dancing. Her hair was black too, curly and untidy.

In observance of Flag Day

Did you observe Flag Day yesterday?

Neither did I but at least I have an excuse. I was at Home in 1864 Philadelphia with Momma and Flag Day didn't become a holiday until June 14, 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation.

Though Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday on June 14, 1937.

(National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress in August 1949.)

Here in Philadelphia, the Betsy Ross House has long been (or at least it will be) the site of Flag Day observances. The Betsy Ross House may be where Betsy Ross lived when she may have made the first American Flag.

I think I'll walk over to Betsy's house and salute the flag.

That blood of heroes never dies

Even after the South seceded from the Union, President Lincoln would not allow any stars to be removed from the flag.

I am ashamed of myself.

In my excitement for Saturday's Phoenix Comicon, I totally forgot what weekend it is.

Decoration Day or, as you now know it, Memorial Day.

First enacted to honor Union and Confederate soldiers following the Civil War,  it was extended after World War I to honor Americans who have died in all wars. 

In an article from the Associated Press (which began in 1846 as a way for five competing newspapers to cover the Mexican War):

CHARLESTON — The city that plunged the nation into its bloodiest conflict can also lay a claim to holding the first Memorial Day observance honoring the dead from the Civil War. 

In a little known event, as many as 10,000 people, many of them black, gathered May 1, 1865, to hold a parade, hear speeches and dedicate the graves of Union dead in what is now Hampton Park in Charleston. 

A number of towns around the nation claim holding the first Memorial Day, although the distinction generally goes to the town of Waterloo, in upstate New York. 

Waterloo held its first Memorial Day in 1866. 

In the North, in 1868, the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, ordered the graves of the war dead be decorated with flowers and memorials. 

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit. 

Through the years Memorial Day was generally celebrated on May 30. Beginning in 1971, the federal holiday was designated as the last Monday in May.

So please, thank a vet for your freedom this weekend.