Since I was born in Ohio and have lived there more than any other state besides Mississippi, maybe you won’t take offense to this statement.
Everyone knows that Mississippi recently voted on a flag that incorporated the Confederate Flag (you can get technical, but that is what we call it). And speaking of technicalities, we didn’t have a state flag before the vote (ask Saint Zero for details). For that reason we were given another flag to choose.
I voted for the old flag, partly (not totally) because the new flag although not swallowtail, still looked like something to fly behind a boat. I was glad to see Uke Ike make the same comparison that I’d made for that type of flag.
It’s worth noting that many of the “Seal on a Sheet” State Flags are regimental colors from the Civil War. Typically a regiment would have two flags, a National Colors (the US flag with stars and stripes) and a second flag that was particular to the regiment. In the Regular Army the regimental colors were a sheet colored according to the branch or arm of the service, blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, red for artillery, and an eagle with the national shield on its chest and a ribbon in its beak. On the ribbon was the regiments name, e.g., “Twelfth Infantry Regiment.” In the State regiments the regimental colors often were a sheet of the branch color with the state seal instead of the eagle that appeared on the regimental colors for the Regular Army units, and a ribbon that listed the regiment’s name, e. g., “Seventy-Second Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”
While the “Seal on a Sheet” State Flags might not have much emotional significance for us, they meant a lot to Northern veterans who were middle aged men at the turn of the last century. These were the flags that they had marched behind and fought under in a war that decided whether the nation would continue to exist.
I think they were going for North America generally, and felt obliged to include far flung US possessions such as American Samoa. I’ll grant them the leeway of excluding Latin America, since the nearest country, Mexico, doesn’t even have state flags. Likewise, I don’t feel too bad about ignoring Carribean islands, which are a confusing hodgepodge of overseas colonies and independent nations, and you can wiggle a bit on whether they’re even part of North America.
But it was a crime to leave out the flags of Greenland and St-Pierre-et-Miquelon. Each is pretty sharp, and each is clearly a territory on the North American landmass, although separate from the mainland.
I live in New Hampshire, and I love almost everything about it, except the flag (seal on a sheet). That’s particularly bad because the alternatives are so obvious and so attractive. Everything else in NH - signs, license plates, the state quarter, the state emblem, souvenirs, etc.- has one of two images on them, either the Old Man of the Mountain or a moose.
Also, while most people seem to be against having any text on the flag, we are proud of our state motto, “Live Free Or Die”, and it’s short enough to fit.
The “Mexican Solution” would also have involved giving up quite a bit of sovereign power. Mexican states aren’t nearly as powerful as U.S. states within their own borders.
Nevertheless, teachers still tell kids to find the state flag of various Mexican states. I usually print out the webpage listed above and tell the kid to tell his teacher to stick it.
Greenland’s is pretty sharp, I’ll agree. But St-Pierre-et-Miquelo’s flag is way too busy! Pick one design and stick with it, please…
Greenland, of course, politically belongs to Denmark (although it has a considerable degree of home rule), and St-Pierre-et-Miquelo to France, which might explain why they weren’t considered. Geographically they belong to North America, but politically to Europe. Part of what strikes me as clever about Greenland’s flag is the way the colors show a connection to Denmark, but the design makes it clear that this is a separate, if not entirely independent, nation. Many other Nordic territories and regions continue to use the Nordic cross, with their own colors, and the result is that it can be difficult to remember which is which. Greenland’s flag, and the Sami flag for that matter, stand out among a sea of crosses when the Nordic flags are flown in a group.
Well, I meant purely in a vexillogical sense. Besides, if you look at the history of Georgia flags, the state–and I believe many other states as well–didn’t have any officially adopted flag until after the Civil War, at a time when the states were in fact much more “sovereign” than they are today.
I guess I am the only one who thinks that the Maryland flag is horrible. It’s way too busy.
The California flag is simply the flag of the old Bear Flag Republic, a very small and very short lived independent nation from the 1850s. (It only lasted six months before the US government illegally filched Alta California from Mexico and shut down the tiny country, if I recall correctly.) I don’t care if the words lowered our flag’s ranking on the list, it’s historical. Besides, if we ever secede, we’re set, flag-wise.
I liked the Canadian provincial/territorial flags I looked at, especially Nunavut. Very nice! Greenland is also classy. In the US, South Carolina’s is easily the best.
Like to cast a vote for one that I haven’t seen mentioned…Oregon. The fact that the flag actually has different designs on each side is unique, which gives it bonus points.
Rufus
That account is chosen for brevity, and because it backs up the dates. It glosses over the rather interesting bit that the rebels who stormed Vallejo’s home met with an unexpected reception. Unknown to them, Vallejo was fed up with lack of support from the Mexican government, and reacted by basically saying “I’m with you guys” and throwing the doors open. No shots were fired. Of course, they still arrested Vallejo anyway. They let him go after a short interval, and he became an important political leader:
If somebody asks you which 3 states were independent republics before they joined the union, the more proper answer is “Texas, Hawaii and Vermont”. The Vermont Republic lasted for 14 years actually, before they were admitted as the 14th state.
Another Georgian checking in to say that the old flag had to go but the new flag sucks. This survey made the front page of the Atlanta paper, by the way. Maybe the legislature will take notice and go back to the drawing board.
It could have been worse. When talk of changing the flag came up, I half expected the powers that be to slap a peach on a bedsheet. Thank God that didn’t happen. (Though it may yet…) I don’t understand my native state’s fascination with the peach logo. Hell, South Carolina grows more peaches than we do. In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever even seen a commercial peach orchard in Georgia. Where are they?
I vote for South Carolina’s as the best flag. I have always loved that design, and see no reason Georgia couldn’t come up with something equally cool.
Maybe we could borrow a rattlesnake from the old “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.
Maryland’s flag makes my eyes hurt. Look at it for five seconds and the after-image gets burned into your retinas. I can’t believe that abomination made the top ten.
Puerto Rico came in very respectably in the top 10 (and believe me, if the existence of the poll had become widely known among the puertorrican cyber-community, we’d have matched the Texans in ballot-stuffing )
PR plays on one of the vexillological rules – that if it looks like some other flag, there should be a real historic connection (in this case to Cuba, both islands struggling with Spain in the 1890’s, both frontlines of the Spanish-American war) and they should be clearly distinguishable (obviously-recognizable reversed colors and different proportions)
I was one of the members of the general public who participated in the actual poll, and the final results, specially of the top and bottom brackets, were very close to my answers (xcept for something I’ll mention later on).
Two elements that probably weighed heavily in the mind of the pro and amateur vexillologists:
(a) it’s a proper heraldic pattern, and a historic one to boot
(b) it’s instantly and unequivocally recognizable. There is nothing you could mistake it for. Once somebody tells you “this is the flag of Maryland” you’ll recognize it on sight for the rest of your life. Remember that the original utility of a flag or ensign was as a way to identify your formation/ship in the middle of a battle.
BTW the flag of the Marshalls, their legal independence date notwhitstanding for the sake of argument (along with Palau and the Federation of Micronesia), it looks to me to have a bit too much of a “corporate logo” feel to it. I put Hawaii in my top #10.
jrd
IMHOCalifornia isn’t even close to second place and Texas is probably tied with several states for 1st place. One would be Florida and another Alaska (sorry I can remember when Texas was the largest state). Then New York and Hawaii (how could you get it mixed up with any other state?). Oh, Idaho! Come to think of it unless you are geographically retarded there are only a few that aren’t immediately recognizable. Some people could be confused between Mississippi and Alabama perhaps.
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