Prosthetic flagpole after-market extensions for that permanent half-mast look – Half-mast inflation

Hi readers.  Jeanne and I pulled into the parking lot of the Olathe Community Center prepared to do serious battle with exercise machines.  But my focus was distracted by the half-mast status of the flag.

“Why’s the flag at half-mast?”  Me, trying to think of how many living ex-presidents might have kicked.

“I dunno.  I guess someone died or got killed somewhere.”  She didn’t pause from gathering her water bottle and unbuckling her seat belt.  “Maybe someone in Iraq or somewhere.”  She shrugged.  “Half-mast inflation.”

They seem to do that a lot in Kansas.  Running the flag up to half-staff as frequently as possible on the safe assumption somebody died.  But I suppose that’s everywhere.  When I was in Texas and only got to town every couple of weeks I noticed they held off dyings of important Americans to coordinate their half-staff flag-flyings with me being in town.

But it probably began a lot earlier.  Hell, it got in style when Elvis Presley died, I think.  Damned flags all over the country celebrating the day the music died.  Bye, bye Miss American Pie.

There are only, what?  365 days sometimes, and either 364 or 366 other years, and so damned many important people.  Finding some days when the flag flies from the top of the pole is going to leave someone who ought to have a half-pole lying dead with a full masted flag.  Not properly recognized.

The obvious solution is to retrofit extensions on all the damned flagpoles across our great nation so’s the default position is half-staff and there’s no option of insulting any deserving half-staffers.

Considering how many important people we lose every year to drug overdoses, suicides and downsizing there aren’t a lot of options.  Although they’ve got a Commemorative US Postage Stamp of Jimi Hendrix, I noticed.

But even having a postage stamp with your picture on it becomes inflationary.  Next thing you know they’ll be naming cars after the Killed In Actions [KIA] and changing street names every time a two-bit politician or a button pushing drone-jockey in Afghanistan falls off a bar stool and offs himself.

Old Jules