Flag Day June 14 -

                It just so happens that while reading A. Scott Berg’s 2013 biography of President Woodrow Wilson, titled eponymously Wilson, I came to the summer of 1916 when, after much provocation from Germany upon its neighbors far and wide, and after years of Wilson’s determination to “stay neutral,” things got so bad that the president went to Congress for permission to put the U. S. into the war.

                I’ll pick up on page 403 and since copyright allows reviews, I’ll quote a few sentences: “June 14—the day in 1777 on which Congress had adopted the Stars and Stripes as the emblem of the Union—had been sporadically observed ever since the start of the Civil War; but in the spring of 1916, Wilson officially proclaimed it a day for ‘special patriotic exercises’ on which Americans might ‘rededicate ourselves to the nation, ‘one and inseparable,’ from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers’ first views of independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded.’ It had an electrifying effect.”

                From The Big Book of American Trivia by J. Stephen Lang published in the waning years of the 20^th century—1997—come these questions about “Grand Old Flags”: “Flags are more than pieces of fabric. They’re symbols, often highly charged with emotion. Small wonder that their design and care have been important parts of American life.”

                I’ll skip the first one (June14 is what holiday?) 2. What was John Philip Sousa’s flag-waving march, written in 1897? 3. What familiar D. C. sight is 555 feet tall and has fifty American flags around it? 4. What southern state’s flag shows a woman trampling a man? 5. What southwestern state’s flag features the sun symbol of the Zia Indians on a yellow background? 6. Over what historic Maryland fort was the first fifty-star U. S. flag raised in 1960? 7. What was added to the original U. S flag in 1795? 8. What state’s flag was designed in 1927 by a 13-year-old schoolboy? (Hint: the 49^th state)

                Answers: 2. “Stars and Stripes Forever”; 3. The Washington Monument; 4. Virginia’s—the female figure is actually an Amazon warrior woman, trampling on a tyrant. The state motto is Sic semper tyranniss—“Thus always to tyrants” (in other words, “Don’t mess with us Virginia folks”). 5. New Mexico’s;

                6. Fort McHenry in Baltimore, site of Francis Scott Key’s writing of “The Star Spangled Banner”; 7. Two new stars and stripes for the new states, Vermont, and Kentucky; 8. Alaska’s.

                Finally, from The Morrow Book of Quotations in American History by Joseph R. Conlin, 1984, these tidbits: Oliver Wendell Holmes – 1809-1894, Physician, poet, and wit: “One flag, one land, one head, one hand/ One Nation, evermore!” from “Voyage of the Good Ship Union,” 1802. And John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 1892) Poet: “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/ But spare your country’s flag,” she said.” (from “Barbara Freitchie,” 1863.

                Fly your flag on Flag Day.

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

The Universal Blunder - a 4-minute essay by Dr. Frank Crane

 

 

Picture by sis Carolyn--2012

 

by Pat Laster 

 

Once again, I reach for a book. It’s the liturgical season of Lent, and bent on being useful, I submit this essay published in 1919 when Woodrow Wilson was president. Dr. Crane was a Presbyterian minister and wrote at least eight volumes of such essays published by Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc. This essay is from Volume 8.

 “The universal blunder of this world,” said Phillips Brooks, “is in thinking that there are certain persons put into the world to govern and certain others to obey.

“Everybody is in this world to govern and everybody to obey. There are no benefactors and no beneficiaries in distinct classes. Every man is at once both benefactor and beneficiary. Every good deed you do you ought to thank your fellow-man for giving you an opportunity to do it; and they ought to be thankful to you for doing it.”

That is a mighty good sentiment to set down on your tablets. It may gain you a deal of happiness if you will believe it. It may even save your soul.

Certain people work for me and I pay them wages. But the maid who sweeps my room is no more my servant than I am hers. Because I give her money and she gives me work does not make me her superior.

It is the ancient delusion of the centuries that labor in some way lowers a man. The real fact is that it ennobles him.

For instance, Mr. Wilson is considered by the American people, and I am sure he considers himself, as their servant. He has no mortgage on his job. He holds it by no divine right. He cannot pass it on to a successor of his own blood or choice. When we don’t like what he does, we criticize him. There are certain partisans that yelp at him every turn he makes, like a pack of yapping pups. We do not suppress them. It is the constitutional privilege of vulgar people to scold their servants.

And yet he is the chief man of the … nation… . In former days he would have shouted, “Off with his head!” when any one crossed him, and would have worn a crown, also a robe… .It is the spirit of service that makes him the decent, conscientious, hard-working man he is.

The curse of wealth is that it destroys this spirit of service. The man who does nothing because he has enough to live on comfortably is no better than the man who does nothing because he can beg or smoke … on the bench by the poorhouse door. Both are leeches. They are not serving. They are being served.

When you lose sight of the duty of serving, you invite … spiritual microbes of the most destructive character to come and breed in you.

There is a luxury in being waited on. But that feeling induces pride, meanness, selfishness, the undisciplined will, the unruled passions, and the whole rakehelly crew of traits that cause excess, perversion, indolence, selfishness, boredness, and pessimism.

There is a luxury, too, in serving. It is a real pleasure when it becomes a habit. It brings on the genuine happiness-makers, which are humility, unselfishness, sanity, health, optimism, cheer, and a wholesome interest in life.

The greatest of men said of himself: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”

And I say, especially during this season of Lent, Amen.

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