I really don’t know what made me the godless liberal I am today, but it might have been the Virginia state flag.
The Virginia state flag is in the news now because a school district in Texas has taken it out of their lesson plans and their library. There’s a nipple on it. Just the one, but you let one nipple in, or out, and before you know it your grade schoolers are dancing and feeling each other up and stuff and then they’re going to want to know about abortions. I mean, I guess. It’s a slippery slope.
(Guaranteed, some dude on the Texas school board is now thinking hard about slippery slopes.)
Anyway, the Virginia state flag has fallen victim to the Texas Lamar School district ban on frontal nudity. Hell, we’ve got a beaver on the back of our flag here in Oregon. Don’t tell Texas!
Thing is, I was seven years old when I studied the Virginia state seal, which is depicted on the flag. We learned a lot of Virginia history back then because we were Virginians. At the time I was living in a town where “the coloreds” rode in the back of the bus and there were separate drinking fountains and toilets, and schools, so I personally didn’t know any Black kids even though they were living in their own (let’s call it) gated community, minus curbs, sidewalks, and sewers, and that was three blocks away from my house.
That’s a little thing called History that still exists but only in the minds of people who lived it, because it’s being refurbished now into a totally new shinier history. Probably also in Texas.
At any rate we were taught all the different parts of the seal of the Commonwealth and I also remember something about Patrick Henry and the House of Burgesses and I remember our state slogan, Sic Semper Tyrannis. But I don’t remember anyone getting all hot about that loose nipple. You were always seeing things like that on statuary—the old Romans and Greeks were pretty casual about their wardrobes. The lady on our flag is said to represent Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue, and if she isn’t worried about it, we probably shouldn’t be either.
I know the thirty of us in Mrs. Erdman’s third grade class were not worried. We were more interested in how many boogers we could stick under our desks, and who just farted, and stuff like that.
That flag goes back to the Revolutionary War. It’s old. If Texas just waited it out a while longer, there’d be no nipple showing on our goddess. Just a flattish lump lower under the toga.
Virtus is depicted stomping on the lifeless chest of a king. It was a big deal back then, defeating tyranny, oppression, and autocratic rule. Something to celebrate. There are those in Texas today for whom that message might rankle more than the bare breast. Which, by the way, was added to the flag in 1901 because the secretary of the Commonwealth thought Virtus looked too masculine. “Let’s see some titty,” he directed, because even back then it was considered important to know which of the only two sanctioned sexes a person might be. That was only five years before my Aunt Gertrude was born, who was my Uncle Bill when he died. Yes, children, even way back then!
To be fair, Virtus does look super butch. Not trad-wife material at all. But you know? That’s what it takes sometimes, when you have a tyrant to overthrow.
Now fetch me my spear.
Never mind her breast… shouldn’t they be more concerned about his being able to see under her dress in that position?
He can’t see under her dress! He can’t see anything. He’s dead.
He could be the Undead. Just lying back, thinking about lurching.
When I was a kid growing up in Toms River, NJ, the only place you’d see Blacks was on the south side of the River mostly in their very own community which some literary wag named Manitou Park. Sounds fine, right? An Indian name in a town whose legendary founder, Tom Luker was supposed to have married an Indian princess. Manitou is a type of spirit, a spook if you will. And spook at one time was a derogatory name for Blacks.
Or maybe it was an unintentional naming. I didn’t figure out that it might be meant as an insult to the people who lived there until I was in my twenties and everyone I shared that with had never made the connection.
We knew as kids that Manitou Park was some place you didn’t go. It wasn’t that white people shouldn’t go there. We didn’t think of ourselves like that at that point. There was us and there were others.
I didn’t get my first glasses until the third grade. It wasn’t that my eyes suddenly got worse but that my third grade teacher realized I couldn’t see that far.
My earliest memories are of blurred shapes in the distance, which explains why I was nearly run over by cars a bunch of times.
It also explains why my earliest memories of Black people in the flesh were black stick figure silhouettes who chased me and my brother when we stumbled upon their swimming hole. It enforced the message that Black people were other and stereotypical.
I’d actually seen Black people earlier than that and close up. They were the help at Oakwood Inn, Maryland, a crabbing and fishing themed hotel. There were no children, just men in white shirts who were the porters and women in the kitchen and the dining area and who were the cleaning staff. I never knew their names or recognized them as individuals, partly because everyone who was farther away than three feet was a blur and mostly because they were never treated as more than things who provided service.
To the bare breast on the Virginia flag, my first impression was that Virtus was a guy with one nipple showing and then decided it was a Classically rendered woman. Not anything to get excited about.
I first thought it was a guy, too. I was wondering what the fuss was about with a guy showing a nipple. Hell, I’ve seen lots of older, overweight guys mowing their lawns shirtless. Oh, the horror…… Younger, buff guys get a pass. 😉
I could be that guy, but not quite as buff
Dude… not quite as young either. 😉
That was hurtful. True, but hurtful.
I’m glad you two are friends. Otherwise, I’d have to step in and negotiate things.
I have 4 (very liberal) friends who were born & live in Texas, and whenever I talk to them about idiotic things like this, they sound like those poor blacks forced to live on the other side of the tracks. By the way, I feel very old. When I was a kid, growing up in the small rural town of Waynesburg Pa, in our local five & dime store were 2 water fountains in the back of the store. A big shiny steel one, and an older white porcelain one. Side by side. There was no sign above the steel one, but the porcelain one had a small wooden one that said “coloreds only”. We drank from both, no one said anything or stopped us. In the early 1970s, they changed that sign to “Children”. But we still called it the coloreds fountain. Unreal.
I know of Waynesburg, PA only as part of the Waynesburg & Washington Railroad. Looks like the last locomotive and a passenger car are preserved there.
Bruce that’s the right Waynesburg alright. I know it once had a very popular railroad.
It was three foot gauge. It did enough business that the Pennsylvania Railroad bought it out and when its days were over, the PRR preserved the last locomotive before turning it over to the historical society
I did not know, Bruce, you had an interest in railroads, but I am not one bit surprised.
I have a ton of interests. I have written a number of published articles on building structures for model railroads and have done research on tramways on local cranberry farms that used surplus WWI equipment originally meant to serve the Allies in France.
Narrow gauge (anything less than the standard 4’ 8 1/2”) is of particular interest. The western narrow gauges like the Denver & Rio Grande Western are better known, but the East had a number of narrow gauge railroads in a variety of gauges from three feet to two feet. I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life ferreting out information on these little railroads.
When I was in third grade the very shy kid who had just moved to our rural area spent about and hour cutting a 4′ felt doll (in the gingerbread person style) out of her felt skirt. What a treat! I gaped at her the whole time. It was brand new. How imaginative. I would imagine her parent gave her an earful, if not more. I don’t recall that she ever wore it again……… we talked about (all 41 of us) a lot!
Pretty sure the Maryland State Flag is the best state flag. It’s gorgeous.
Oh Susan…You made me look!
Wow! It looks like a piece of abstract art, especially when compared to the boring flags of other states. Part heraldry, part auto racing flag!
That is a snazzy flag and makes sense given it incorporates the heraldry of two noble families. I remember being really surprised by the design of the flag used to drape Princess Diana’s coffin. Similar heraldry rather than the Union Jack.
All I know about “Sic Semper Tyrannis” is that it is what John Wilkes Booth, in his diary, claimed he shouted when he shot Lincoln, and that it was supposed to be what Brutus said when he stabbed Caesar, though Plutarch had some doubts that Brutus had time to say anything. The Wikipedia entry on “Sic Semper Tyrannis” is very interesting.
Do you think we might be ready for some new material in that Wikipedia entry?