Q: What is the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag?
A. (1775): A banner designed by Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden, using colonial rattlesnake imagery popularized by Benjamin Franklin, that accompanied the first-ever mission of the nascent U.S. Navy.
A. (2009): According to law enforcement officials “the most common symbol displayed by militia members and organizations,” possibly indicative of “terrorist or criminal operations.”
I was awake a little too early this morning and actually got to the end of the internet with a few moments to think about things. Given the times, with more of us in retired or at least post-career occupations, the swarm of emails is literally a torrent that needs to be attended to on an hourly basis.
If I am too exhausted after the evening at Willow to clear the queue, there are fifty or sixty things to be viewed, ignored or answered with the first pot of coffee. One of them was curious enough to make me slow down and read it. The New York Times editorial people have identified an entirely new field of unacceptable behavior which they term “microaggression.” This alarming trend in something so small as to be virtually undetectable is “not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour… used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.”
This opens up a whole new and frankly breathtaking avenue for people to be offended, the one true growth area in a struggling economy, hahaha.
I was pretty well committed to writing about oriental vegetables today, but that brought me up short. The whole bok choy thing has been eating at me for a while. I spent fourteen months living in the Republic of Korea a long time ago, and got a yen for the fiery kimchi and garlic and exotic veggies that stayed with me even as the cuisine leapt across the Pacific to California, become hip and, and mutated in a way that suggested it had been produced by a collision between Mexican and Korean food trucks.
Spring always gets my creative juices flowing, and I wound up in the Harris Teeter supermarket on Glebe Road yesterday in search of Duke’s Mayonnaise, a brand not carried by the Defense Commissary System where I normally shop. Since the produce is much fresher at the civilian store, wandered through to stock up on veggies.
On a shelf above the broccoli were some bulbs of baby bok choy, and on impulse, I grabbed some. The little Korean deli next to my old office always had a tray of fabulous blazing hot bok choy kimchi, all seseme oil and red pepper paste, and I thought I might give it a spin.
Which in turn led me down the rabbit hole of memory, trying to figure out where the brown earthenware pots I bought long ago had got off to in the Great Move last summer. That is another mystery that will have to wait for enough warmth to attack the remaining boxes in the garage down at the farm.
I wondered if I still had any of the Kwang-ju hot pepper powder- that really was the key to what I wanted to do with the bok choy. You know, something simple:
Baby Bok Choy Saute
Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Dash sesame oil to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
8 cups chopped fresh bok choy
2 tablespoons Kwang-ju Province hot pepper powder (your risk level appropriate)
2 tablespoons soy sauce (reduced sodium is OK)
Course sea salt and ground black pepper
Directions:
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and sauté vigorously for a minute or so. Add bok choy and soy sauce cook 3 to 5 minutes, until greens are wilted and stalks are crisp-tender. Season with the salt, black pepper and a pinch of the Kwang-ju pepper powder, if you dare.
So there I was in the produce aisle, not thinking about the health consequences of the boo choy (they are manifold and good) and had not a thought in my pretty head about the Affordable Care Act, until I had completed cooking breakfast and returned to the computer to finish the morning survey of the world. And that is where I came across the Gadsden Flag dressed up to promote enrollment in the Health Exchanges.
It was so bizarre that it literally stopped me in my tracks, or would have had I been making any.
The coiled rattlesnake and defiant motto of the Gadsden Flag are apparently becoming the new Confederate Battle Flag, which has been the object of such fury of late. Virginia even has a license plate in bright yellow, celebrating the history of the flag. Apparently it has also assumed some sort of ominous association with the National Rifle Association, or the Klan or something.
For my part, I fly the flag of the Culpeper Minutemen on the pole in the circular gravel drive at Refuge Farm, just under the National Ensign. It differs from the Gadsden pennant only in color and a few words, and has been the City of Culpeper’s official logo for a very long time. It links us to the hardy band of brothers (including future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall) who gathered just outside our village and then marched off to fight the Brits at Great Bridge near Virginia Beach.
A friend down in the Dismal Swamp noted that the battle was of immense significance in the war of the Revolution: “…because the Brits somehow didn’t realize what they were giving up by abandoning the spot. The fight (which included about 800 on the side of the colonies and 450 on the Brit side) leaves me stunned that they never came back – and thereby ceded control of the harbor, the bay and arguably the southern center of the colonies. The more I have looked at it the more it has struck me as a seemingly minor decision that had a major strategic impact on the Brits.”
That caused me again to consider who gets to write the history of these affairs. Virginia’s role as the mother colony, cradle of the early presidents and conceptualization of the Constitution was airbrushed after the Civil War and replaced with dour Pilgrims at the Thanksgiving table.
I think maybe I need to replace this banner with the flag of the Conch Republic. At least that is a little less provocative, even if more directly related to the act of Secession that Key West proclaimed in 1982 after the Border patrol set up the check point in front of Skeeter’s Last Chance Saloon on Rt 1 in Florida City, just at the start of the Overseas Highway.
I am sure I can find someone to get offended about that, too, but hopefully in a way so small as to be indistinguishable. In the meantime, I am going to look for the kimchi pots down on the farm and get started on something really hot.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303