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Patriotism

Guest Posts, Patriotism

American Flags

November 11, 2020
flags

By Eric LaFountain

Today in downtown Coronavirus Miami, a frayed American flag stands atop the Alfred I. du Pont Building. The flag changer has likely been sent home, and since you cannot replace a damaged flag remotely, here it is—such a rare, odd sight. In my hazy memory, the last frayed American flag I saw was nearly two decades ago during G.W. Bush’s iconic 9/11 bullhorn speech, when he dismissed his security team’s warnings and stood amid the rubble, loose and full of swagger, his arm brotherly draped around a Norman Rockwell painting-looking white Irish NYC fire chief. It was the one and only time I felt respect for that fake cowboy.

In my hazy memory, I left school during G Block study with my wolfpack, stellar students that we were, to perform our ritual: smoke weed, eat scrambled eggs, watch Jerry Springer, and partake in those glorious, freewheeling teen talks I so wish I had the foresight to record for future enjoyment and analysis. But of course, the ritual was disrupted that day, and on TV was our flag, flying wild and tattered from cold, naked rebar. (It’s possible my memory has it all wrong, that the flag was pristine and new, placed there specifically for the good photo optics). Nonetheless, the channels eventually skipped from the flag and G.W. to a clutter of talking heads, and in this part of the memory there is no haze. Each one was singing the same song, which I heard like this: mumble mumble Al Qaeda Afghanistan bin Laden mumble mumble Al Qaeda Afghanistan bin Laden.

Their song was accompanied occasionally with a grainy video of this new character, sitting cross-legged, an AK resting by his feet as he held aloft his long finger in emphasis, reciting what I assume was his call to arms, his declaration of jihad. He had doe eyes and a feminine face, almost pretty, and my stoned teenage self knew instinctively that this was an important character, that Afghanistan was an important country, and that I knew absolutely nothing about the world around me. The thin paper dome surrounding my sheltered world began to shred, and as the rip widened, I stuck my head through and looked around. What a vast, complex world I’d just woken up to! What incredible ignorance I possessed! My down feathers still covered me, fuzzy and soft, but on that day, a few fell off and I felt myself take a baby step out of adolescence, into my adulthood.

Eric LaFountain lives and teaches in Miami. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including *Potomac Review*, *Jabberwock Review*, *Hobart*, and *Pleiades*. He’s currently working on a YA novel about an abandoned boy and abandoned cat. You can follow him on Instagram @eric.lafountain.

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Guest Posts, Patriotism, Politics

P is for President

July 3, 2017

By Lori D’Angelo

A is for Anita Hill
One of the formative events of my high school years was the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Specifically Anita Hill’s testimony. I was a freshman in high school and I was 14. I watched the hearings on my grandma’s old central-to-the-living-room TV, an appliance that always seemed to be on. I didn’t know what sexual harassment was and I had never seen a porn movie. My then Pennsylvania senator, Arlen Specter, was among the rat pack of White Men acting like Ms. Hill was out for something. I don’t know what. Public embarrassment? But I think Anita Hill accomplished something, even if it wasn’t the dismissal of one of the least qualified justices to ever be appointed to the bench. She accomplished awareness, and our national conversation about sexual harassment changed because of her.

B is for Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton was the crush of my youth, my high school and college years. The first president I ever voted for and the president I vocally and ardently supported before I was old enough to vote. Bill Clinton was smart. Bill Clinton was hot. Bill Clinton was mesmerizing. He was like a intellectual girl’s wet dream. In college, I had a life-sized Bill Clinton cutout that my apartmentmates got me for my 22nd birthday. It was a little alarming to walk in to our third-floor apartment and think, Hey, who’s that strange man, and realize Oh, it’s just Bill Clinton. I was around Monica Lewinsky’s age, a college student when the intern scandal broke. I remember disagreeing with our journalism school dean at the time. He thought the intern sex story was a legit thing that we should cover. The Starr Report was everywhere. I thought that going to office supplies stores and seeing it amid pencils and paper clips was one of the most horrifying things I had ever encountered. Did Bill Clinton have sex with that intern? I didn’t really care. If I was the intern, I likely would have done the same thing, and that’s the truth. But I hope now that I wouldn’t have because though Bill was the politician of my youth, his wife, Hillary, was the politician of my life.

C is for Class President
In 9th grade, I ran for class president. I lost to a girl who is now an attorney and an elected official in our shared hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her family was in politics. I didn’t know that then. The boy who came in second was Indian and had terrible skin condition. Not only did I lose, I really lost. I never ran for student council again. In ninth period freshman English, I held back tears as the girl in front of me, a pretty, popular girl told me: I voted for you. I wanted to get our school to do things like recycle more. I don’t think that was on everyone’s agenda. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Patriotism

My Patriot Problem (explained in movies)

November 11, 2016
movies

By Debby Dodds

A loud thumping on the door seemed indistinguishable from the thundering pounding in my own head. All I could think of was that scene in Sixteen Candles with Long Duck hungover, moaning on the ground “…the Donger need FOOD!”

Florence, Italy I told myself as I surveyed my pension bedroom through the watery slits that had previously been my eyes. I slid out of bed and crawled to the door.

In 1992, I wasn’t the wine drinker I am now, so the few glasses I’d had with my new Italian friends tortured me mightily that morning after.

I was backpacking overseas with a new boyfriend, en route to Sardinia where we’d planned to stay with my old boyfriend, with whom I’d never officially broken up. In retrospect, that might have had something to do with my imprudent imbibing the night before.

I opened the door a bit and peered through the crack I’d allowed.

“Your Vice President is an IDIOT! He cannot even spell POTATO! HA!” A fiercely triumphant Roman in a red banana-hammock bathing suit stood outside my door gesticulating with his finger at me.

I pinched the bridge of my nose to try to quell my raging headache. “Carmen? From last night, right?” I vaguely remembered him heartily guffawing at my stories in the common area of the B&B around 2am. I’d been making him guffaw, telling him stories about working at Disney World. He especially enjoyed hearing how some American tourists made it their mission to “drink around the world,” sampling beer or wine at every country pavilion when visiting Disney World’s Epcot Center, but my goal had been to “date around the world” when I worked there, as every country from England to Morocco was staffed exclusively with cast members hired from that country. Continue Reading…