America and it's flag aresymbols known around the world, hated and loved at the same time. It's kind of funny how I've gotten such a flag fetish latelying two in my car, and one in the window of my room.Sometimes the flag's colors stand the brightest and mean the most in times of great personal turmoil, when the world seems to be upside down, and things don't make a lot of sense. It's not neccessarly a central rallying around the flag, but a personal love for the flag and freedoms it represents.

To me, the American flag has seen it's greatest moments when used most contemptously: the Abbie Hoffman flag suit, the 'defiled' peace flag, the flag on peoples shirts and on motorcycle helments, and even the burning of the flag in protest. The flag ultimately represents freedom, and all of these people represent the values that are latent in the flag.

I love our flag and I love America. It is a place of free thought and speech, it is where we can all grow and become who we want to really become. It is a free country, one with lush green fields and tall mountains that appear to reach for the sky. Sometimes that is difficult to see in a world with so much bigotory and prejudice, but we must look deeper and beyond our fellow citizens to ourselves and the world around us. There is a lot of good in mankind that has yet to be released, and our world will be at peace someday, but not yet.

America is a great place, although sometimes it's greatness is countered by those whose fear and desire for power lead to tyrancy. Our founding fathers did much to counter such actions, but there are still abuses in our society and not all can be as enlightened as they were. The malaces of American society are great and can overwhelm the good, but we must look at the bigger picture—trying to focus on the beauty, while not forgetting the ugliness of the prejudical world around us. The beauty of the rural Hilltowns should not drown out the ugliness of the Rapp Road Landfill nor should the evils of Rapp Road takeover the beauty of the area I live in.

The colors of the flag and of America are often hard to put down on paper and nearly impossible to photograph. The sky is so blue and pure, and the grass is so green in the rural fields that are around here. The flag hanging from flag poles in front of farmhouses is so beautiful, with it's bright red, white, and blue. The flag is far more then a symbol or a bunch of colors, instead it reflects something more fundamental about American values and who we are as a society. Something beyond what I can easily describe in words.

America is almost as contradictory as the flag's colors. Red and blue are primary colors of light, and white is total light—they stand out independently like the many factions in our political society. Websites and organizations that attempt to use these patriotic colors in their designs, tend to rapidly see the uglyness these colors put together create. Yet, somehow our flag puts these colors together in a beuatiful way, not unlike how we put together the different factions of American society.

There is a lot that the flag means to me. It is something beyond a central ralleying point, indeed it is about representing our freedoms and the diverse society we live in. I hang the flag with great pride in my room, on my car, outside of my house: the flag defines who I am and who I am becoming.