Please Wave The Flag…
June 15, 2009 · Print This Article
Please wave the flag…in the name of our civil liberties…making the world safe for freedom…when we don’t even have it here…I am a photographer who has been heavily influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson…I like to take pictures of my town and the landscape I know…lately, John Updike has a new collection of short stories about memories of his town…I am not saying at the level of Updike but I am aiming for that sort of portrayal….
My family has been in town for 60 years…the post office used to be down the street from where it is now…I even worked it in one summer after college…it was memorable for a lot of reasons the least of which I was reading Bukowski’s Post Office at the time…
As America has changed over the last several decades so has the town…that would be obvious point no matter what…people used to know everyone here…the eccentrics…the drunks…the snobs…so on and so on…but that has changed…and people with a few dollars act with a huge sense of entilement…because they can drive a porsche or live in mcMansion that somehow they are important…in reality they are not…they see litttle…they know less…when downturn came last September so many of them dropped like flies…it was literally here today gone tomorrow…I grew up here…I know the woods like the back of my hand…I know the streets…and I know the light as it changes through the seasons…for the most part the professionals who come here live on the twelve year to eighteen year plan…that’s how long it takes to get their test tube socially promoted kids through the system…it’s cheaper to pay the 40 or so grand a year school taxes than it would be to pay individual tuitition at a private posh school down in Manhattan…this is the way of global capital…notice they don’t make anything…they just know how to move paper around and believe me you the laws they break in the process would make your head spin right off your head…none of their children die in the senseless wars they go grandly promote…they could care less about the downsizing of American jobs as long as it means more profit for them…
so please wave flag…when that officer asks you for your id, your phone number, your profession, and what you’re doing gladly tell him everything he wants to know all in the name of freedom…
Cool. I remember when you worked for the post office.