Tag: flag

The School for Children Who Don’t Need it

A promotional banner for Gilded Lily Nursery School advertising enrollment, featuring an image of a mother and child interacting with educational blocks, with greenery and an American flag visible in the background.
East 96th Street, New York

To gild the lily:

  1. To embellish or improve something unnecessarily. 
  2. To add superfluous attributes to something. 
  3. Make unnecessary additions to what is already complete. 
  4. Adorn unnecessarily (something that is already beautiful). 

Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Pro Trans

North St, Brighton

This demonstration, flags and all, marching down North Street back on the 5th of July, was advocating for trans rights. Unseen, to the right was another small stationery demonstration under the Jubilee Clock Tower (I think pro-Israel, but it was hard to be sure). I asked a policewoman what they were about and she told me “all sorts” but she was pretty jolly about it.

Hammer and Sickle Marx the Spot

Grand-Place, Brussels

Upon entering the Grand-Place (coming up next post) I noticed this woman unfurling a hammer and sickle banner and getting photographed with it. An almost unimaginable sight in the US, I grabbed a couple of shots and then went over to speak with her and ask about the flag. Although she only spoke Portuguese, and I could only manage some French, a girl with her spoke English and helped her cheerfully explain that they were with the Communist Party of Brazil and she pointed to a brass plaque above her on the wall, noting Karl Marx’s connection with the spot. According to Wikipedia, “In 1885, the Belgian Workers’ Party (POB/BWP), the first socialist party in Belgium, was founded during a meeting at the Grand-Place, at the same place where the First International had convened, and where Karl Marx had written The Communist Manifesto in 1848.” I showed her the pictures I took and she expressed interest in having copies so I gave her my card.

Farnham Castle Keep

Here are the first touristy images from my new home in Farnham, Surrey in the UK. The castle, about 20 minutes’ walk from our apartment, is about 900 years old and we took a walk around the Keep and the grounds (the castle itself wasn’t open the day we went) and you can perhaps get some sense of it. I took many more pictures but, especially after all my ruined Irish castles I frankly found them a bit boring. You can see the flag at half mast as we arrived here in the days before Queen Elizabeth’s burial.