Flags

Weekly update: Wind is a fact of life in the Española valley.  But how fast is left to folklore.  We don’t have a weather station, and it’s one climate aspect that can’t be generalized from Santa Fé or Los Alamos.  The one always has higher winds because it gets them coming from the plains.

I once bought an anemometer, but it was worthless.  I should have read the product reviews.  One man tested his by holding it out window on a still day while his wife drove at different speeds.  It didn’t work after about 20 miles per hour.

A flag is better than that.  The rule of thumb is: guess the angle of the flag from the pole, and divide by four.  At 90 degrees, that gets you 22.5 miles per hour.  I’ve gotten so used to winds that high, I’m not interested.  I want to know how high the winds were last spring that brought in the Russian thistle harvest.

When I’m in the house, I’m alerted to some wind by echoes through the roof.  That’s not particularly reliable.  It seems to depend on the direction of the wind.

In the summer, I can look out the window opposite my desk and see the wind is blowing if the leaves in the crab apple tree are moving.  In winter, I’m left with gauging the movements of dried heads of the Maximilian sunflowers.

Winter is also the time when I can use my neighbor’s flags.  He not only installed a 25' pole, but lights it at night.  I can’t see it in the summer through the leaves of the catalpa and the cottonwood, but in the winter it is visible from the kitchen window.  It beats stepping outside at night when air temperatures are below freezing.

I’m sure he did not install his pole to judge the wind.  Any kind of banner hung from his porch would have served as well.  I know his father was in the army, probably Korea.  If he served, it would have been in Vietnam when the draft still was active.

My neighbor is not the only one to dig a hole, fill it with concrete, and erect a pole that cost a minimum of $100 from a Big Box.  I counted five others when I drove into town on Tuesday who flew the United States flag.  Two people were like my neighbor, and added the state flag.

Then there was person with three flags on one pole, and another who had three poles for three flags.

Looking at urban fixtures in yards may seem an odd preoccupation for someone interested in plants.  But, they are no different than the statues Italians place in their formal landscapes.  They are part of what humans do to remake the environment.  Erving Goffman called it The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in 1956.

I don’t draw any conclusions about politics from the presence of flags.  None of the people who had flags flying put up campaign signs last November.  That includes none who put up Trump signs that I could see.

There’s a strong group of veterans in the area.  The post office still flies the black-and-white Missing-in-Action flag along with the state and federal ones.  There are two memorials: one has three flags on three poles, the other eight on eight poles.

That outdoes the government buildings, although officials seem to think they should fly as many as possible.  I didn’t realize the city and county had their own flags, but that’s the only way the county building, police station, and library could manage three flags.  Our local fire station only has one. There are no Jones to keep up with this far away from town.

While flags are part of our civic life, they do not infiltrate the rest of our public life.  Only one store had a flag hoisted on Tuesday.  One evangelistic church had three poles with one flag each.  But no one else had flags flying on a non-holiday on the main roads that parallel the river.

Setting a flag pole takes skill.  It’s not the sort of thing one can hire done, if only because of problems with getting labor at all.  A couple of people hung flags from poles attached to their houses.  Those brackets aren’t as hard to install.  One other man put a flag on his gate.

My favorite was a man who put a small flag, like the ones children carry on the Fourth of July, on the seat of a rusting piece of farm machinery in his yard.

Weather: Last week small amounts of rain or snow fell for three days.  This week the clouds cleared and temperatures plummeted with nothing to hold in heat at night.

Last token snow: 1/21.  Week’s low: 7 degrees F.  Week’s high: 50 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 44 mph in Santa Fé on Monday.

What’s still green: Needles on pines and junipers; leaves on cliff rose, yuccas, alfilerillo, coral bells, coral beard tongues; bases of blue flax and Mexican hats

What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaf buds on winterfat, leaves on snow-in-summer

What’s turning purple or red: Stems on some roses; sprouts on apricot; twigs on peaches, and spirea

What’s turned yellow: Branches on weeping willows

Notes on photographs: Neighbor’s flags, 24 January 2023