Red, White & Spoooooky

This morning, while tooling down to Cafe Commons on the Vespa, I was thinking about the American flag. I was thinking that the Dutch flag is also red, white and blue (and even in that order!), as is the British flag.

That led me to thinking that the Dutch influence on our then-inchoate country has been severely underrepresented. Probably our need to set up the Brits as the super-bad-guys.

Which in turn made me think about how inadequate my education was on how exactly the US flag came to be what it is, and who decided. For some reason I thought of Ben Franklin, in particular.

Then later, on BART, on my way to Emeryville (eMary-ville?) I continued in my reading of Foucault's Pendulum, and on the very next page, was mention of how the flag of the US had been decided upon! It went on to mention the Masons, and how their participation might have led to pentagrams being used.

To quote the book, “But the fact is that it doesn't take long for the experience of the Numinous to unhinge the mind.”

ummmmmm...yeah.