An Epiphany On The Beautiful Star Spangled Banner

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​An Epiphany On The Beautiful Star Spangled Banner

      Yesterday, a windy Labor Day, I was out for a morning walk around my neighborhood, snapping a photo here and there along my way,

...when I came across a sight, an altogether familiar one that I'd seen hundreds, make that thousands of times before in my life. But this time for some reason this commonest of sights struck me as quite beautiful.
​        It was my neighbor's America flag, waving in the wind.

       Now, I don't mean to say that the beauty I saw in this flag was related to feelings of patriotism or love of country or my connection to my fellow Americans - though I do consider myself among the most patriotic of  Americans, I love my country, and I do feel a familial bond with my countrymen and women.
       No, what I mean to say is, for a moment I found myself seeing this rectangle of cloth objectively, minus any emotional import; And I was struck by how objectively visually pleasing it was. Its bright colors and geometric shapes looked to me like a piece of modern art. It was imaginative, it had energy, it popped, like something that might have been conceived by a Mondrian,

...or a Lichtenstein,

...or a Warhol,

...had any of those artists been around in 1776.
     Which got me to pondering: who was the artistically ahead-of-their-time creator of that first American Flag, in which the 13 stars appear to be dancing in a circle? 

    Of course, every American school child knows that George Washington came to Betsy Ross and asked her to sew a prototype flag; but who designed it? Were the stars, stripes, and colors Betsy's idea? Or did she merely give form to George Washington's, or someone else's, artistic brainchild?
​      I googled "Who Designed the American Flag?"  What I learned was...nobody knows for sure.
        However, historians 100% agree that the story of George Washington coming to Betsy Ross with the flag idea and she then sewing it is a legend made up and passed around by Betsy's relatives that somehow stuck. I guess because it's such a great uplifting story, and who can resist believing a great uplifting story?  

       Historians for the most part think the first flag was likely designed by a signer of the Declaration of Independence named Francis Hopkinson. 

     Apparently a document has been found in which Mr. Hopkinson petitioned George Washington to be paid for his work designing the flag. I don't know if George Washington ever paid up.
        In any case, the appearance of their new flag did unite and raise the moral of the citizens and soldiers of the struggling new nation. Its image likewise inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner." And up until now whenever I visualized that one line in our national anthem, the too-high one that nobody but a soprano or a castrato can sing, I always saw in my mind images of rockets and bombs bursting in air.​

     But now what  I see is the light given off from the rockets and bombs illuminating our flag in the night sky.      ​

     In other words, that notorious throat-straining line isn't about rockets and bombs, but about the flag with its broad stripes and bright stars. 
​   And so now, since my epiphany, I have a new feeling about the star spangled banner that we call our flag. Whether or not our country these days is worthy of it, our flag remains a thing of beauty.

References:
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/long-may-it-wave-the-evolution-of-the-american-flag/francis-hopkinsons-claim

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/long-may-it-wave-the-evolution-of-the-american-flag/the-legend-of-betsy-ross

​https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/long-may-it-wave-the-evolution-of-the-american-flag/resolved-that-the-flag-of-the-united