Friday, June 19

Juneteenth Flag Lowering?

What??

The maintenance guy outside my window just lowered our American flag, here in Minnesota.  I googled Gov. Tim Walz declared late yesterday that the flags be lowered today -- the 19th -- in honor of CoVid19 deaths...  Hm.*

But also in my Google search:  Gov. Pritzker of Illinois announced that flags would be lowered in recognition of Juneteenth... Is my governor just a coward re. his reasons?  Is it just coincidence that he chose Juneteenth to honor the CoVid dead? Hm.

I'm on record -- we lower that flag waaay too much in recent years.  It should be rare, for significant American mourning periods only.  If you have to Google to learn why your flag is lowered, and you keep up regularly with current events and know American history, it's likely not a good reason...

Besides, Juneteenth is NOT a time to mourn.
It is a time to celebrate the date when the last of our least -- our American citizens descended by enslaved workers into slavery themselves -- learned that they too would one day, hopefully, share in America's great bounty.  You don't want us as Americans to mourn that, do you?

Don't lower those flags, please.  And for heaven's sake, don't pretend you are doing it for a more politically palpable reason in your majority white, non slave, free labor state.  Talk about being cowardly in trying to hide your push for diversity and political correctness!  Be for real, governor.  Just own why you did it, and just decided to do it yesterday, on Juneteenth eve...
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Thursday, June 18

4:30 p.m.
As he will do for the 19th of every month in 2020, Gov. Tim Walz instructed all flags across state and federal buildings to be flown at half staff from sunrise to sunset in memory of those lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Thousands of Minnesotans have lost dear friends and close family members in the fight against COVID-19. Each life taken has been a heartbreaking tragedy for our state. In these challenging times, we must work together to slow the spread of this pandemic," the governor said in a Thursday statement. 
Will he kneel in honor of the CoVid-19 dead too?:
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ADDED:  Time in the archives put me in touch with these two previous posts, a few of my favorites:
Having already donated blood, mailed a check to the Red Cross, and sent a letter of thanks to the New York Fire Department, Pearson was aimlessly wandering from room to room in her apartment when the idea of creating the confectionery stars and stripes came to her.

“My friends Cassie and Patrick [Overstreet] invited me over to have dinner and just talk about, you know, everything,” said Pearson, a Topeka legal secretary who has never visited and knows no one in either New York or Washington, D.C. “I thought I’d make something special or do something out of respect for all of the people who died. All those innocent people. All those rescue workers who lost their lives.”

Mixing the cake and placing it in the oven shortly after 3 p.m., Pearson sat at the kitchen table and stared at the oven door until the timer rang 50 minutes later.

As the cake cooled, Pearson gathered materials to decorate it. She searched the spice cupboard for a half-used tube of blue food coloring, but could not find it. After frantically pulling all the cans and jars from the cupboard, she finally found the tube in the very back. Emitting a deep sigh of relief, she spread the coloring over the cake’s upper-left-hand corner to create the flag’s blue field.

“I baked a cake,” said Pearson, shrugging her shoulders and forcing a smile as she unveiled the dessert in the Overstreet household later that evening. “I made it into a flag.”

Pearson and the Overstreets stared at the cake in silence for nearly a minute, until Cassie hugged Pearson.

“It’s beautiful,” Cassie said. “The cake is beautiful.

and:
An obituary written by the now-late Nick Coleman in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
"When anyone dies, we want our families around us," he told me a few years ago, after celebrating his 50th anniversary of his ordination in 1953.

"But when you have an 18-year-old kid, thousands of miles from home and he'd like to see his mother but there's nobody. ... I tried to be the local parish priest for those kids. Their eyes are just pleading with you: 'Help me, help me.' It was awful."

"But I had to be there."