The unique blog 4007

A flag on a breeze is a simple thing. Cloth, color, a bit of stitching. Yet every time I hoist the Stars and Stripes, I feel the tug of something larger, an ele…

The first flag I ever raised on my own went up in a dry Wyoming wind that turned the rope into a humming string. It was barely past sunrise. The sky was that mi…

Around 8:05 a.m., the hallway outside a middle school cafeteria sounds like a soft orchestra of chairs sliding and zippers closing. The intercom crackles, stude…

On a rainy Monday a few years ago, a middle school principal I know asked his custodian to move a cluster of flags from the main hallway to a smaller side corri…

A few years ago I sat with a high school junior in the guidance office after a minor dust-up in the lunchroom. He had bowed his head for a quick grace. A nearby…

On the first day of my student teaching, I walked into a fourth grade classroom before daylight. The room felt like a freshly set stage, bulletin boards papered…

A few years ago, I visited a public high school on the edge of a midwestern city. The building dated to the 1970s, all brick and square angles, with a new glass…

Walk into ten public faculties and you will see ten special relationships with the flag. In one, the Stars and Stripes hangs in the back of a whiteboard, slight…