Baking Flags

Sat back in the black office chair this afternoon, having just read that Hilary Clinton signed a bill to ban flag burning, marveling at how the mighty fall.

Now back on the home front, straight up drinking a glass of milk, relistening to Danger Doom and the claxon oven timer alarm. Pause a moment to throw another batch on the baking stone, take a fresh thirteen minutes to sit back and reread that first sentence, to wonder why people are as worked up as they are, to ruminate that a flag is a flag is a flag.

I've heard it said that the American flag is a symbol of Freedom. The oft forgotten truth is that Freedom is not a thing of cloth and thread, nevermind nylon or automobile magnets, but a grand abstract that couldn't be burned with the brightest match.

As eloquently put by Justice William Brennan in his ruling on flag burning, "We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents."

Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Sitting on the just dusted hardwood floor, Danger Doom on the b-Pod (ask him could he bark on the beat and spark calli/villain not the cat you want to meet in a dark alley), gazing up at the pale pink lights strung around the Charlie Brown tree (only now noticing that half the string is dead, but who besides pets doesn't neglect the bottom of the fake fir, far from the angels and the stars). Images flash silently across the television set, I should just turn it off but the distraction is a crutch, better used for balance than illumination. And just like that, I pack my hockey bag and head out to my men's league game, half past nine on a biting Tuesday night.

Soon, Josephine

And so follows stony silence, and Robertus sits in the blue barka lounger, wired for the first time in years (or thereabouts) watching Jimmy Carter on the Daily Show, wondering what could have been.

There will be more, mes amis, I promise.