Thursday, November 13, 2014

It's a grand old flag

Quick!  Name the four American state flags that do not contain the color blue!

All right, then, name one of them.  It's Maryland!  (Also California, Alabama and New Mexico.) And only one US state flag (Mississippi) still features the Confederate States of America battle flag saltire, for reasons that no one can quite explain. And you look at all of them, and some of the other state flags are just loopy!


But, Maryland!  I've looked over all the pennants from all 50 states, and there is not a cooler flag in the nation than the one we fly so proudly here in the Free State. There are two components, diagonally arranged: the black and gold is from the family coat of arms of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore back in the 1600s, and the red and white is the coat of arms of the Crossland family, the family of Lord Calvert's mother.

It's been the official state flag since 1904, but for the first 107 years, the flag hung lifelessly in school classrooms from Oakland to Ocean City, and flew from the roofs of state office buildings.  And then!  Wow~!

Some say it started with the 2008 football season at the University of Maryland, when the U painted the state flag design on the end zones at Byrd Stadium. Suddenly, everywhere you looked, you saw the black and gold and red and white! The flag design is very cool now and can be seen on T-shirts, sunglasses, ties (both four-in-hand and bow), socks, car decals, and even sports jackets.  Very chic stuff here.

Here we see the flag as part of the bicep tattoo on a proud Son of Maryland...

...you see it on the uniform jerseys of our baseball and football teams...and UnderArmour, one of the greatest success stories in our state's manufacturing history, dresses the U of MD football team in various flag-related togs.     
I happen to think it's a darn good flag, and it's good to see so many cool young people sporting it all over town.  My suggestion to use the design for contact lenses is still available for anyone who would want to look into it!

Contact lenses do bear looking into.  That's how they work!

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