RMW Ramblings

  Vulpes A Mount Salem Lane neighbor has been feeding a local red fox, which now hangs around. It inspired me to do a fox painting.  I painted  Vulpes  in a classical Greek/art deco manner mimicking my 2011 painting  Equuis.   An earlier fox appeared in my 2008 painting  Reynard Regards Kaitlyn where I imagened our granddaughter and the observing fox on the Canby bench in Rockford Park. It hangs in our stairwell in a frame I built for it.  

  July 4, 1776 An Undated Post Card   This post card from my flag related card collection has some strange elements.  Uncle Sam is smoking a cigar, and seems to be seated on a $-labelled bag, and is accompanied by a cannon and an umbrella. The flags in the border have 25 stars.  The card was printed in Germany, probably before WW I.  The images are embossed.    

    Prancing Heron Finished yesterday,  Prancing Heron  has art nouveau and art deco references.    

  Stations of the Flag Apollo 11 Our last stop on the Stations of the Flag is a quarter of a million miles away, on the surface of the Moon.  On July 20, 1969. Several hours after  the Eagle had landed, many of us watched on television as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag on the surface of the Moon.  This iconic photo, showing the flag with Buzz Aldrin, was taken by Neil Armstrong.   The surface was too hard for the flag assembly to get a firm purchase and there was concern that it would topple over on camera.  It did survive, but did fall from the blast of the lunar module's launch to rendezvous  with the command module. Five other US flags have been planted on the Moon, all now bleach white from solar radiation.  Conspiracy proponents have claimed that the landing was faked in a studio, citing perceived irregularities in the flag's display.  Unlike some other parts of the American Flag mythos, the planting of the Apol...

  Stations of the Flag Iwo Jima Next on our Stations of the Flag tour we move from painted and post card imagery to photography, and from Maryland to the far side of the Pacific in World War II.  On February 23, 1945 Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took this iconic photograph of USS Marines raising the flag on the crest of Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The image has been adapted many times, on stamps, coins, posters, and most famously of all, as the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.     You can buy a kitsch version through Amazon.         The flag of World War II had 48 stars.    

  Stations of the Flag Barbara Fritchie           The October 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly added the next station of our American Flag mythos with the publication of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Barbara Fritchie."  In the poem Fritchie calls to the passing Confederate invasion, "Shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare your country's flag." The actual event was not as Whittier poetically presented.  The details are murky, and the confrontation with the rebel army may have been from another woman (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Fritchie). But along with Betsy Ross, Barbara Fritchie is now firmly part  of the American Flag tradition.  Here's a Barbara Fritchie post card from my collection  The American Flag at that time...    Fritchie died a few days after the alleged incident and well before the publication of Whittier's poem, never to know she had been immortalized in our country's flag cano...