South 12th

Two new pieces posted today.

Both pretty Minneapolis-y.

At Quodlibetica, a short essay on photographer Paula McCartney’s new book, On Thin Ice, In a Blizzard, and the way we talk about weather in the Upper Midwest. The images in the book are McCartney’s beautiful photograms of ice, created in the dark room:

It seems at first like this exercise may be McCartney’s way of exerting control over powerful natural forces; of bringing these phenomena inside the comfort of the studio, where they can be controlled and mediated. This is a common response to the obliterating harshness of a Midwestern winter -– a sort of denial. A cultivation of the idea that overcoming the cold is nothing more than a simple act of willpower, and that by simply willing away the elements, one can just get through it.

And on MinnPost, a stroll around the wilds of my own neighborhood, Powderhorn, and finding modernist dry cleaners, semiprecious gems, burger lords, and Emma Goldman:

I’ve taken more than one East Coast friend for a walk through these neighborhoods, only to have them look around with confusion and say, “This doesn’t look like a city. This looks like a really old suburb. This looks like New Jersey.”

As mentioned yesterday: recovered from the personal archives, it’s my make-out guide to the Twin Cities, originally published in The Rake magazine in the September 2006 issue. I think you can peg the beginning of my personal cultural production in Minneapolis right about here. 

Some latter-day descendants: “Ghost Crawl: A walk through the Warehouse District gallery scene 20 years later” (which appeared last month in Rain Taxi), and “38th Street: A Culinary Travelogue” (from the Heavy Table, earlier this year). 

America’s historic flags: which ones have been co-opted?

THE GADSDEN / MINUTEMEN FLAG

Stupid liberals — we lost this one fair and square, and it’s all your (OK, our) fault. Somehow, this excellent underdog motto and symbol has been completely co-opted by the most privileged group of people in the annals of Western civilization as a rallying cry to abolish the last lingering vestiges of the New Deal and re-institute the Gilded Age (except without the jaunty mustaches this time).

Did you know Terry Southern wrote a drug-crazed sequel to Easy Rider where Wyatt and Billy actually come back from the dead as zombies to battle Fascist Nixonian America in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? It’s true! And what’s more, what Terry Southern have them do? Strap on the Gadsden Flag, very first thing, before riding off to Washington, DC! A perfect, crazed, leftist vision, now ruined forever. I mean, sure, it’s a kind of a stupid vision, but still. It’s something.  

Status: COMPLETELY CO-OPTED

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THE BENNINGTON FLAG

I know this one has been dragged out by Tea Party people on some occasions (as is the case in the image above), but all in all, I don’t think this one is completely co-optable. For a few reasons: first of all, it originated in Vermont. Vermont! The home of America’s only socialist Senator! Second of all, it most likely wasn’t a Revolutionary War flag at all; most likely, it was created during the War of 1812, so it doesn’t align with the Tea Party’s necrophiliac play-acting obsession with the Revolutionary War. Thirdly, it’s probably most associated with American’s Centennial and (especially) Bicentennial. The wacky handmade quality of the “76,” the six-sided stars (ZIONISTS?!?!?!?), the oversized canton: it smacks of the sort of zany playfulness that ruled America during one of the least Tea Party-oriented periods in American history, the 1970s. It looks like it should be on someone’s belt buckle, a person sitting in the back of a Chevy van with bubble-tinted windows at a Jimmy Carter rally. This is really not Tea Party material. This relic is 100% in line with the aesthetic of a person cheering on the actions of the Church Committee. Can our government be competent? Jimmy Carter says “yes”!

Status: NOT CO-OPTED

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TAUNTON LIBERTY FLAG

Despite its beauty of meaning and central place in the lexicon of American democracy, “liberty” is becoming, unfortunately, one of those weasel words that tends more and more to mean “cut social services for poor people.” “Union,” however, is completely safe. It’s in no danger of being co-opted by the Right, and is a word I would like to hear more often in political discourse in its broader sense.

Well, actually, not completely safe. “Union” here actually means union with England. That, plus the presence of the Union Jack is what makes this one so tricky — this flag was originally flown by Tories that still maintained loyalty to the Crown, but wanted to petition for full rights as Englishmen. In this context, that might be read as either a form of conservatism so atavistic it seeks to return America to a pre-1776 state (something that few on the Left or Right are advocating right now), or a case of Anglophilia so extreme it renders all aesthetic judgement completely impaired.

This is, unfortunately, sort of the flag equivalent of the kid in your hometown that spoke with a British accent starting sophomore year, scrawled lyrics to Adverts songs on his or her Trapper Keeper, and wore a World War II RAF fighter plane target on his or her trench coat to your high school’s graduation ceremony. Which is to say: aesthetically laudable, conceptually suspect.

(On a semi-related note: why doesn’t America still have a crazed, minority faction of Tory royalists? Aren’t there still French monarchists, all these centuries later? I’m not saying we need something like that, but it does seems a little odd, considering how many Americans supported remaining a British colony during the Revolution. Where did they all go?)

Status: PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION

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ROGER WILLIAMS’ FLAG

Roger Williams, that great Rhode Island separator of church and state, liked the red ensign just fine, but not the Cross of St. George in the canton. So he removed it, and there you go: red field, white canton. It’s a strange reductionist vision of what a flag should be. It’s defined primarily by what it’s not: basically, it’s not British. You can fill in the blanks from there yourself, making it the most open-ended of historic American flags. 

Status: COMPLETELY SAFE!

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WASHINGTON’S CRUISERS FLAGS / MISC. FLAGS WITH PINE TREES ON THEM

The pine tree is a fairly old symbol for America (and New England, specifically). The idea was that some early allies of the settlers were a band of Native Americans known to the Algonquins as the Penacook, or “children of the pine tree.” Personally, I like the idea of the pine tree a lot: it’s independent and it stands alone, hence fulfilling the need to symbolically express that individualist strain inherent in American self-identity, but it is also part of a broader interrelated system in which it must play a part. I’d say the “appeal to heaven” business is more a rhetorical underdog device than a theocratic statement of purpose, but you can take it as you will. This one turns up at Tea Party functions once in awhile, but I think it’s too subtle and too restrained to fit into that universe entirely.

The Iowa-via-Chicago artist Katie Hargrave, who’s one of my favorites, does a lot of work with these sorts of flags. In fact, I own one of her pieces — a handmade flag with a pine tree in the canton.

Status: SAFE / NOT CO-OPTED

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GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS FLAG

Merry Christmas from inside the be-lace’d lid of a Mason jar in 1982.