Phthursday Musings: A Fool for the City Won't Get Fooled Again

I hadn’t written anything except the title, and she looked over, and her head waved in an unnatural way, and something happened with her eyes, and she said You’re so weird, and I’ve got to tell you all, I really had no idea what I was going to write about it, but I liked the title so much I figured I’d start there and see if anything came to me, and, well, it sure did!

I can’t remember if it was something I read or watched, but I remember an interview with Michael Stipe which I think must have been from between Automatic for the People and Monster where he explained how the three other members from R.E.M. would write music first and then he’d come in later and add lyrics. I always found this utterly fascinating, like such a strange method to go about creating something. Of course, he also could have just been messing with the interviewer.

The thing about META-SPIEL is that no single piece is ever too terribly long. Maybe it can seem that way by the standards of something that’s delivered by email, but it’s not like I’m posting an entire novel all at once or anything like that. And I’m not sure if META-SPIEL is better understood as cause or effect, but I’d observe that I haven’t sat down and worked on a long, sustained project for quite a long time. Even when I’ve tried to do something a little different, it’s been something like a short story. I don’t have like… a huge brick of marble to slowly chip away at sculpt into something over months or years. Unless you count my doofus kid. Which you probably should.

Due to an odd confluence of events, I found myself in downtown Crystal Lake at 4:15 on Tuesday afternoon. It was a ghost town, which was a shame because there were some very interesting things there.

I passed a hardware store, except it wasn’t still a hardware store… it was a flag store, named… The Flag Store. I bought one small thing there as a gift, but mostly I was just thoroughly impressed at the existence of this crazy place, which sold American flags not made by Communists, and also sold lots of pride flags, and it kind of felt like the flag equivalent of City News, the newsstand-and-coffeehouse in Portage Park, where I’m convinced they would happily sell anything from extreme military magazines to extreme Marxist magazines and think nothing of it.

As yet another example of You’re so weird, as a kid, about the same age as my kid today, I fancied myself a budding vexillologist. (I actually wrote about this in the very first Phthursday Musings in 2020 and even used the word “budding” then!) There was a store on Charles Street in Rockford which sold flags and I bought 2’x3’ British and German flags there some 35 years ago, and over time I assembled a small collection of little flags, like 7 inches wide. When we were visiting Atlanta when I was 12 (I think) I found a store that sold flags that size, and I think that’s where I found what was then my favorite flag:

This was the flag of Zaire from 1971 to 1997, when the country’s name changed to Democratic Republic of Congo. I didn’t know the history, how this was Mobutu’s flag, etc. I just thought it was awesome imagery.

Anyway, I didn’t buy any flags. But I did buy two books a couple storefronts down, at Green Reads, the bookstore owned and operated by the McHenry County Environmental Defenders, which is… well, exactly what you think an organization with such a name would be. It’s a very nice used book store, one I’d make a point of visiting again.

I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations recently about the decision to stop minting pennies and the lack of clarity about what this is going to mean. In my mind, it’s all pretty simple, Canada did this over a decade ago, and for cash transactions they just round to the nearest nickel. But it’s also gotten me to thinking about how many places just aren’t even taking cash anymore. I paid cash at both The Flag Store and Green Reads, and further down the street when I got a chocolate tortue at an ice cream. But I’ve rarely been using cash anywhere else lately.

Incidentally, it was Tuesday that I learned that the French word for turtle is tortue…

I understand about things like credit card fees and small businesses operating on tight margins - and my goodness, how very tight must the margins be if you’re running The Flag Store - but it occurs to me that there’s something else about paying in cash, and I think the word I’m looking for is congeniality.

It’s nice to get a reminder to shop local. I think I’ve lost track of it a bit, not because I’ve been hanging out at Office Max or whatever, but more so because working from home… I’m just not out there that much? I may try to make a point of taking in a late Friday work morning from a coffeehouse again. It used to be really help for my ability to get work done well. Most weeks, by the time I get to Thursday afternoon, my brain is shot, my eyes are shot, there’s just so much monotony to everything.

Most of you will read this on Friday, and when you do, hereby be informed that you are celebrating National Donut Day. (I was contractually obligated to note this.)

Friday is also the last day of school here. (Somehow every other school district is already done, except apparently for those wacky Canucks.) Saturday will be the last soccer game of the season. (Possibly the last four games of the season, as there’s a year end tournament!) It’s like, woah, summer, it’s really here. Long days, pleasant evenings, so much opportunity to sit back and crank the Foghat.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking: Gosh… what’s his favorite municipal flag?

Well, today’s your lucky day, because I think I have an answer!

Yessirormadam, that’s the flag of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The circle repesents the sun shining its grace on the city. The blue squiggle represents the Grand River, the rapids of which give the city its name. And the red represents a goddamn beautiful bat, gobbling up every last mosquito to save us from their gross nuisance. It’s a true work of art, isn’t it?

Alright, three flags is probably enough to share this week. If there’s popular demand though I may start offering a flag of the week.

I’m sure there will be popular demand.