Bureaucracy

I found these stickers on my walk home yesterday evening -- an interesting, and encouraging, response to the right-wing, anti-immigrant demonstrations that occurred over the weekend! That flag is the St. George Cross, the national flag of England, and it's often waved by anti-immigrant demonstrators (remember the "Send Them Home" guy in Blackpool?). I like the idea of reclaiming it for everyone.

Flags are weird things, aren't they? A scrap of cloth, and yet a powerful symbol -- and a lot of us disagree about what's being symbolized. I'd argue that the American flag symbolizes rights of expression that could include, ironically, burning the American flag. And yet a lot of people think it symbolizes pride, and that burning it somehow contradicts or offends its message. (Not that I'm about to burn a flag. I'm just using that as an example.)

I've never been a flag-waver. I think I've hung a national flag exactly once, and that was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Like a lot of my neighbors, I put one in my apartment window in New York as a symbol of unity and recovery. Oh, and I waved the British flag at our citizenship ceremony, with all the other immigrants!

Speaking of which, I applied for my first British passport last night. I'm hoping to get it in time for Tenerife at Thanksgiving. According to the Home Office web site that shouldn't be a problem, though they're making me jump through some hoops -- like I once again have to find someone of professional authority to verify that my picture is in fact me, even though I just jumped this same hurdle for my citizenship application. It's not a big deal -- I can get someone at work to do it easily enough -- but it seems a silly requirement. Don't they have my picture on file in some big computer? Can't they just look at that and see that the passport photo is authentic?

Here are some more stickers and signs I've found posted in recent weeks. Bureaucracy makes me a grumpy cat.

I would like to have seen "an exhibition of giant backlit SX-70 Polaroids," but alas, it was two years ago. The homage to one of my favorite movies was eye-catching, though.

There are several places in the world where kindness is not on display -- Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen -- and Gaza is definitely among them.

Can you stand another garden cam video? More good shots of the fox and our regular visiting cats. At 2:02, the fox appears very agitated and moving fast -- I'm not sure what that was about. Maybe it had a scary encounter with some other animal. And at 2:17, I'm mowing the lawn, so be ready for some engine noise! I was surprised the cats were out wandering around in the rain. I thought cats hated water?