A Whole Nother Thing

Seldom at a loss for words.


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*A WHOLE NOTHER THING:
A selection of words from my vast vocabulary, including the ubiquitous "the," the always versatile "and," and the more obscure "incontrovertible," arranged in frequently meaningful, sometimes profound, yet often pedestrian sentences and statements, designed with one goal in mind-- that being, to communicate; keeping in mind the oft-used bromide, "Never use two words when one will do the same job as two or more words would have done, unless you just want to take up space and sound important," which is, I must concede, too often a secret objective of mine indeed. And yet, now, the secret is out.




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Friday, September 09, 2011

Flags on the Fremont Bridge

Okay, right off the bat, I'll admit I'm a tad anal about some things.

Flags-- I love flags. I've designed my own, actually. Yeah, I'm a true vexillologist. A card-carrying member of NAVA, actually.

Anyway, below please find the text of an email I sent to the poo-bah of the Portland NAVA chapter.

You may find it... interesting:

This is cool!

I drive downtown every day, and without exception, my gaze always finds its way to the top of the Fremont Bridge (I-405) to look at the US flag and the State of Oregon flag. 

For quite awhile, it seemed to me that the Oregon flag was flying just a bit lower than the US flag-- it wasn't hoisted all the way up the staff. Perhaps I'm just a bit anal about this, but it kind of irritated me. I didn't know if it was just my perception, or if it was real. After an indeterminate amount of time (months... years?) I came to the conclusion that it wasn't just me; the Oregon flag was never hoisted quite all the way to the top of its staff. 

I suspected that someone at ODOT (the agency responsible for Interstate freeways in Oregon, and thus, the Fremont Bridge) was under the mistaken idea that no flag can fly at the same height of the US flag. Finally, I couldn't take it any longer. It just didn't seem right that the Oregon flag was not properly displayed at the top of the bridge. 

I went to the ODOT website and filled out a Contact form, voicing my concern. (I don't have the text of what I said, since it wasn't an email, it was typed into the little box on the ODOT website.) I also provided a link to the wikipedia article about the US flag code:


Well, this week I noticed that the Oregon flag had been raised all the way to the top of the staff! And today, I received this response from a Manager at ODOT:

Matt,
Thank you for pointing out our error on placing the Oregon State flag slightly lower than the United States flag. It is my understanding that it has been incorrectly assumed that this is the proper way to do it for quite a while. With your help, we have corrected the situation, raising the Oregon State flag to fly with the United States flag.
Thank you very much. If you see other things wrong or have questions regarding ODOT facilities please do not hesitate to contact us.
Rick Garrison
Oregon Department of Transportation
Is that cool or what?! Us vexillologists can do good! 

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link | posted by Unknown at 9/09/2011 07:55:00 PM | 0 reflections. CLICK HERE.


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