American Flag

Paul Plamann isn't the kind of person who likes to tell people when they've done something wrong. But when it comes to the American flag, he can't help but speak up.This was the case one day last autumn when, while driving by a bank near his Gardenville home, the 61-year-old Army veteran saw an American flag whose broad stripes and bright stars had lost their perilous fight against time and the elements. The flag was shredded and worn, in other words, "just not flyable," he explains.Plamann sent the bank a polite, anonymous postcard suggesting they replace their flag with a new banner.

Why would someone who loves America burn an American flag? Ask Graeme Zielinski, who was a senior at the University of Wisconsin in 1995. That year, he burned a flag on the campus square in Madison."

Deep jewel tones decorated the top floor of the World Trade Center during the annual dinner party given by members of India Forum Inc. The eye-catching colors came not from the room's decor, though, but from the outfits of partygoers. Many members of the group wore their native country's richly hued traditional clothing, while a group of their children sported outfits inspired by the red, white and blue of the American flag -- all in keeping with the dinner's theme of Indo-American friendship.

When is a flagpole not a flagpole? How about when it's a cellular phone tower?In its latest attempt to disguise unsightly antennae, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. plans to build a 125-foot flagpole -- with lights and an American flag -- in the Anneslie Shopping Center on York Road near Towson. The equipment would be tucked inside the pole.The move comes after community opposition last fall thwarted the company's proposal to build a cellular site camouflaged as a bell tower at nearby St. Pius X Roman Catholic Church.

IF THEY have not done so already, advertising types all over the nation are preparing the copy for their giant Fourth of July sales.Soon we will be inundated with newspaper inserts and television commercials telling us to rush down to this department store or that appliance store on the Fourth to buy, purportedly on sale, anything from washing machines and television sets to brassieres and denim jeans.Lost patriotismI don't recall that John Adams said anything about that type of observance when he read the Declaration of Independence to the people gathered in Philadelphia in 1776.

WASHINGTON -- At the opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, politicians are busy these days with contrasting efforts to preserve and honor the American flag. One is commendable, if seemingly a bit extravagant. The other is ludicrous, if well-intentioned.At the White House and the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History, the Clintons this week helped launch an $18 million project to restore the 184-year-old badly faded and tattered American flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814 and helped inspire Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner."

WASHINGTON -- "Shame On Them! ... Shame On Them! ... Shame On Them!"The chanting could be heard a block away, the words bouncing off the concrete buildings and echoing into the crisp, late fall sky.Maybe there were 3,000 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder below the west steps of the Capitol. They were black and white, young and old, a rainbow coalition brought here by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's call to protest. There were trade unionists, teachers, feminists.They were supposed to be here for a prayer vigil.

A letter to the editor on Tuesday incorrectly mentioned the Falls Road SPCA when it should have said the Baltimore Animal Shelter.The Sun regrets the errors.Save a dog from euthanasia and find a good pet at SPCAThree months ago we adopted Samantha, our dog, from the Falls Road Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. When my mom picked her up, her hair was matted, and she was not very attractive. And because of her appearance, many people passed her by. She has turned out to be a sweet, affectionate and lovable family member.

Pity the poor Star-Spangled Banner. In the 184 years since it inspired lawyer Francis Scott Key to turn poet for a day, the huge flag has had a tough life.It's been cut up for souvenirs, had a couple of million stitches applied to it and been subjected to untold hours of sunlight and dirty air.Thankfully, the nation's conservators have taken note. And as detailed tonight on The History Channel, they're doing something to ensure the Baltimore-born flag hangs around to inspire generations of Americans not yet born.

Confederate flag is sign of South's history, heritageI just finished reading the Sept. 22 article, "Black leaders protest effort to honor Confederate soldiers." I couldn't believe that they would act so childishly. Have them go back and reread history. The Confederate flag did not and does not represent racism. It was a flag that men took into battle. Just because "certain groups" use the battle flag in their marches, they also use the American flag.I guess you can consider the American flag racist too, because it flew over the Capitol and the White House when "The War Between States" was fought.

Slanted rays of late afternoon sunshine hit the enormous American flag billowing over Fort McHenry, spotlighting the stars and stripes in a dazzling glow of red, white and blue. Old Glory always flies at the Baltimore fort. And on this day the biggest of four versions in the landmark's repertoire happened to be atop the flagpole - a 30-by-42-foot replica of the one that inspired a certain poem-turned-anthem 195 years ago. Better still for the couple dozen visitors who braved the icy breeze, there was more to do than just look.

The theme was the American flag, but not all the art was Yankee Doodle dandy. Christina Batipps showed a map of Texas with stars in the background and stripes along the southern border to indicate where a fence will be constructed to keep out illegal immigrants. A collage by Halide Salam intersperses symbols of the American dream with scenes of tortured prisoners at the now-shuttered Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Susan Brandt transformed an American flag into a burqa, a long, enveloping garment traditionally worn by some Muslim women and a sign to many Westerners of the women's oppression.

BEIJING - Just when it seemed that nothing good could pierce the gloomy, gray haze that stifles this city, just when the U.S. Olympic Committee set the bar of foolishness and political expediency higher than any gold medalist will ever jump, a story comes along to remind the world that the Olympics still have great redemptive power. The captains of the U.S. teams participating in the Beijing Games yesterday chose 1,500-meter runner Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee who was abducted from his church at age 6 and targeted for a life as a child soldier, to carry the American flag into the opening ceremony tomorrow.

It might have had something to do with Memorial Day, but Bernard Muller was feeling especially patriotic. So when he drove by a post office in Fells Point on Monday and noticed that the Stars and Stripes weren't flying outside the building - as he thought they were supposed to - Muller was surprised. Maybe, he figured, the flag had been taken down because everyone had the day off. But when he went back yesterday to the post office on South Wolfe Street and the flag still wasn't up, he was mad. "It's just appalling," said Muller, a 51-year-old retired Baltimore firefighter who flies a U.S. flag on the antenna of his car. "We're in wartime.

Living flag About 2,500 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders from the Mid-Atlantic will use colored placards to form the 15-stripe, 15-star version of the American flag today outside Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. The annual Living American Flag event is free and runs from 9 a.m. to noon at the monument, 2400 E. Fort Ave. For more information, call 410-563-3524 or go to americanflagfoundation.org. FYI Susan Reimer is on vacation. Her column does not appear today.

Since taking over as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy in June, Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler has not been shy about making changes. He has demanded that midshipmen spend more time studying. He has required Mids to attend more meals. He even changed the color of seniors' uniforms. And, to his credit, Admiral Fowler also suspended the peculiar practice of dipping an American flag in front of a cross during Sunday services at chapel - peculiar not just because the act appears to give governmental sanction to a particular religion, but also because it is "not practiced anywhere [else]

Midshipmen are again dipping the American flag before the altar cross at Sunday services at the Naval Academy chapel, restoring a tradition that supporters say shows reverence but that critics say violates the separation of church and state. Chaplains at the academy suspended the practice in October after questions were raised by Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler, who became the superintendent in June. After some congregants and alumni criticized the move, academy officials relented - a move that one critic called "an amazing act of cowardice."

RAYMOND JACOBS, 82 Member of Iwo Jima flag-raising team Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, died of natural causes Jan. 29 at a Redding, Calif., hospital, his daughter told the Associated Press. Mr. Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945.

Republican front-runners weren't the only things missing from the presidential debate stage. The American flag was AWOL, too. The backdrop to the "All-American Presidential Forum," brought to you by Tavis Smiley and PBS, was a map of the United States, superimposed with a checkerboard of multicultural faces. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, one of the presidential hopefuls, asked debate organizers to get Old Glory up there, too, according to Chris Cavey, first vice chairman of the state GOP. Cavey was acting as an escort for another candidate, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and heard Hunter's request over his earpiece about half an hour before the show began.

A pot of artificial flowers in red, white and blue flanks a granite memorial. American flags, forming a circle, flutter quietly in the wind. The Avenue of Honors in Middle River's Holly Hill Memorial Gardens pays tribute to local veterans of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Now, a veterans group is taking steps to honor soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army Spc. Casey W. Nash, an Eastern Technical High School graduate who was 22 when he was killed by a bomb in May in Iraq, will be among the first honored by having his name engraved on the new memorial.