Flag Day

It's Flag Day and Jules Crittenden has a kickass roundup!

I've got to say, in light of the news coming out of Iran, I'm even more grateful than ever to fly my flag today.

In fact, I'll quote my own blog when back in April I wrote about Leo Thorsness and his time in captivity. His cellmate Mike brought them to tears when he scrounged together items to make a flag; this is from Surviving Hell: A Pow's Journey:

"Mike scrounged a small piece of red roof tile and laboriously ground it into a powder, which mixed with a bit of water, became a faded red or maroon color to make the flag's stripes. We had gotten a bit of medicine in the last year of our captivity, usually a blue pill of unknown provenance prescribed for afflictions. Mike patiently leached the color out of one of the pills and used it to make a blue square in the upper left of the handkerchief. With a needle made from bamboo wood and thread pulled from our single blanket, he stitched little white stars on this field of blue."

It took Mike a couple of weeks to make that flag, working secretly so the guards would not know, and when he proudly showed it to his cellmates, some of them cried. When the guards found the flag, of course, Mike was tortured as he knew he would be all along.

Put out your flag today!