As a good loyalist in this rebellious land, of course I put out the flag. The Americans are much addicted to flying their colours and 'Second Street' that I drive along every morning on the way to work is particularly bedecked with the Stars and Stripes, both the modern version and the original flag of the 13 colonies which has 13 stars in a circle in the top left-hand corner. These days there are quite few Ukrainian ones around as well. At 336 Gibbs Avenue there's a rather sumptuous house that has both the stars and stripes and the Union flag (technically not 'Jack' as a jack is a specifically naval flag !). So I thought I would put out ours and for this trip brought it along, just in case, using the Jubilee as an excuse. My parents bought it for the coronation in 1953, and we've flown it a few times on such special occasions both at Woodfalls and Wansdyke. So it's having a rare airing.
Obviously American houses are usually fitted up with flag holders, but I didn't feel I could use ours as it's directly in front of next door's window and they might have objected (although to judge by their reaction when they saw it, I don't think they would have). Not using the proper support I had to improvise. I found a long broken off branch on one of my hikes and so fixed it up on the stick wedged between a drain pipe and the wall with some judicious bits of string I picked up on the beach !
The other flag I walk past most mornings (usually scurrying actually in order to avoid being caught out in the open by 0800 'colours') is the one in the college. It's been flying at half mast a lot recently. and has much more sombre connotations. Initially this was to mark the fact that the US has now officially reached the dreaded total of one million deaths from Covid. More recently it was flown to mark the latest gun massacre, the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when two teachers and nineteen young kids were killed.
In a horrible way, it's been fascinating to watch the debate about this. In fact, though, there hasn't been much debate, more a kind of despairing resignation. The Republicans and the National Rifle Association swung into action immediately, blaming the massacre on (a) an inefficient police response and (b) deficiencies in the treatment of people with mental health problems, while recommending extra security at schools and even the arming of teachers. The media, much of which is mainly Democrat in persuasion (National Public Radio, Washington Post, New York Times) have focussed on what very mild controls on the acquisition of guns are politically feasible. One option now much discussed are so-called 'Red Flag Orders', the idea that friends and family be given the legal right to request that the authorities temporarily take away the guns of people suspected of being interested in planning such attacks. It's hard for an outsider to understand how something so anaemic could cause so much fuss. Hard-line Republicans are against even this limitation on the civil rights of the individual concerned under the Constitution's 2nd Amendment. Other ideas like banning automatic weapons or magazines with large numbers of bullets haven't a hope of acceptance. The fact that the US has the highest private gun-ownership in the world, followed, a long way behind, by Yemen which has been in the grips of a civil war for ten years, is hardly mentioned. And in fact, ten days into the Uvalde discussion, interest in the issue is dropping off fast, and I suspect it won't be long before the flag is at the top of the pole again if it isn't already.
Otherwise things are progressing and I am beginning to make preparations for my return at the end of the month. One of them of course, is to take extra precautions against getting Covid, which would be particularly difficult for me since my lease is up on June 30th. Infection rates are now slowly dropping, and Newport County has gone down to medium rather than high risk, although there are still masks around, even outdoors. All the same I was dismayed to find that a colleague at college has it quite badly at home at the moment, so the risk is still real. I've been reminded a bit about this as I have been doing some off-work reading about the 14th Century (for the family history project) and it's hard not to keep coming across details of the Black Death all the time ! Not very cheerful reading but at least we know more about what the issues are ! Not the conjunction of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn in 1345which some experts of the time thought the original cause of the catastrophe. Mind you, when we remember some of the weird ideas knocking around during the worst phase of Covid, I'm not sure we've advanced all that much.
Not much else to report, other than after two hectic weeks made even more grisly by totally unreliable WiFi at home (which now does seem to have been fixed), things are beginning to ease off a bit. As evidence of that, I actually had time to stop when leaving to go home one day last week and watch an unusual event taking place outside our building and near the museum. They were returning an anchor that had been refurbished off-site. It belonged, they think, to USS Constellation one of the sister ships of the USS Constellation, so it was made in the early part of the 19th Century . Certainly a massive bit of ironwork ! The workmen were obviously taking no chances and everything was cordoned off, the roads closed and, this being America, the naval police were there in force. Just in case some disgruntled non-graduating student wanted to exercise his civil rights by coming along and shooting everyone. (The site is on a slope - it's not my faulty camera work)
Next week will be busy though. The final close of the academic trimester/term is imminent. I have two graduation ceremonies to attend and an exhibition to mark the battle of Midway - otherwise it's a process of closing things down and sorting stuff out at home and in my two offices ! The awful copy-editing process of the book has been done. This was an 'interesting' experience as the Publisher contracts this out to a company in India. The ladies I dealt with were charming and very helpful, but English wasn't their strong point, as I rather suspected when I received an apologies for the 'incontinence' of a changed deadline because at 900 pages mine was a long book. (In fact it's coming out at 300 which is pretty standard). Add to that the need to use a specialised form of Adobe to do it on line - it all took much longer than anticipated, and involved a certain amount of stress.
I'm also keeping an eye out for my friend with the heart attack. He's making progress, and has been cleared for scones from June Love's English Bakery . This time I managed to get from another shop some 'Devon clotted cream' with a Union flag on the lid. I was intrigued to note that it was actually made in Wiltshire, at Castle Combe, 15 miles away from Allington. It made me feel quite nostalgic - and to contemplate my prospective return with some pleasure. Some stuff from Shelagh's flat was dropped off into the garage last week and the pictures of the house and garden made it look rather good, so seeing that is something to look forwards to. But a certain amount of water has still to flow under the bridge between now and then, so cross fingers
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