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BILL SCHAMBRA: What is this story telling us about the American flag?
AMY KASS: Well, among other things, we could go into something about what the flag represents
and how it shows us one out of many by simply the way in which it's laid out. But I think
that it's an image. It's an image which speaks thousands of words for us.
DIANA SCHAUB: And it does seem to me that in a nation founded on an idea is probably
more in need of that kind of tangible symbolism. So that...if I just think about my own attachments,
I grew up in Minnesota, I think of myself as a Minnesotan still, even though I haven't
lived there since I was a teenager, and yet I think I have no particular attachment to
the Minnesota flag, and I don't think most people do. We all come from one of the states,
but we're not attached to the flags of the states. So that the really rooted place doesn't
actually need a flag. So I actually think there's a connection between the ideational
nature of our founding and the need for these symbols, and so it's interesting then that
this actually becomes the foundation for his own rootedness, this symbol.
LEON KASS: Well, the flag that now has this iconic feature in American life and really
is the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave, the flag before
the Civil War didn't have that meaning. In fact, in the story it's the federal flag,
which means in the story it stands for the Union, as opposed to the flag of the rebellion.
And so the flag acquires also the meaning of the history of the defense of the republic
for which it stands. So it's not just some kind of an abstract embodiment of one out
of many. One additional thing: the flag does these things, like many symbols, silently.
You know, you bring things to it. The Star Spangled Banner adds something; the Pledge
of Allegiance adds something. But, I'm not sure whether stories like Cather's stories
don't help us even more than the flag by itself. In other words, the story about the flag and
its meaning as carried by the flag bearer...
AMY KASS: Needs an artist to tell it.
LEON KASS: Yeah...and maybe even needs a story-teller more than a sculptor.