The Hammock Papers: Stands.

14 June 2020

Stands.

On this date in 1777 the Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Francis Hopkinson-designed Stars and Stripes as the national flag.

It is the American flag. Just that and nothing more. No other adjective is ever prefixed to that word. It stands for the history of the United States and the traditions of our people. It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the man whose people have been here generations. It means freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Look close upon it and you will see a great procession of men who have given all that life holds dearest that that flag might stand. They sacrificed everything that no star should be removed or diminished.

They flag may call upon us again for protection, and when it does, the response will be the same; but bear in mind, that if the citizens protect the flag, the flag must protect the citizens. Wherever any American goes legally and observing the law, there the flag goes with him, and there it must ever go. We cannot afford as a nation to allow the humblest citizen among us to suffer in any way wrong or injustice.

The flag stands for all that we hold dear, freedom, democracy, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. These are the great principles for which the flag stands.

Henry Cabot Lodge, "What the Flag Means," October 1915

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL