Monday, 17 August 2015
Long Beach
Today was the watering of the Long Beach planters and street trees, which went well.

Silver-edged Sanguisorba ‘Dali Marble’ looks good in Fifth Street Park in a spot with lots of water.

It was the first day of the annual kite festival; Allan got this photo looking west while watering Fish Alley.
Allan had commented last watering day, when he did the south end planters, that all the trailing nasturtiums had been cut back from the planter at 7th Street. Yes, they have!
This is an odd whodunit, because parks manager Mike likes things that trail. I am mystified. It was too tidily done to be deer. Hrmph.
The white painted sage starts to brown off first; if clipped, it will have smaller blooms lower down.
Round about this time, Allan and I crossed paths on our watering rounds. (On Mondays, he does the 18 street trees, Fish Alley barrels, and the eight northernmost planters.) We decided to try out the Kebab House. We’d been eagerly waiting for it to open.
It was all delicious and we will be eating there again soon.
Back to watering: I found one of the brand new statice plants pulled out and left to die in the big Lewis and Clark Square planter. THIS time, I found it in time to replant it before it wilted and died.
When I reached the stoplight and looked west to enjoy the view of the first day of kite festival is when I got agitated, because a booth close to the arch was flying a large confederate flag that I could see from three block away, a hateful symbol that would be in any photo taken looking west through the Long Beach arch. I was incensed and walked right to city hall (a block away) to ask if something could be done to move it away from the arch. I ended up just leaving a message for someone high up and went on my watering round, steaming.
My objection was to the flag flying where it would be right in tourists’ faces and in photos of the arch from certain angles, some of which would perhaps get onto the internet with the Long Beach arch and a confed flag in the same photo. When people fly that flag on their homes, I assume they are history-ignorant at best and deliberately racist at worst, and walk on. If it had been flying on a booth in the middle of the concourse but not in full upfront view, I would have been sickened but walked on. The issue here, just as when a hotel was flying it downtown, was that in such a visible spot, it could be hurtful and hateful to visitors and residents, and gives the wrong impression of our town.
Watering again, I was soothed by this charming little band that was playing by a street tree. Jeez Louise by name, they were excellent. One musician played a saw; I wished I’d worked harder to get a photo showing that. I do love a good saw tune. I gave them a dollar, so I could have taken more photos.

I guess I had better explain the chopsticks:

screenshot from Roadside America
I got the t shirt and decided (mostly because of being hot and mildy dizzy) that we could walk back by the paved road (the one by which our garden runs).
I thought I could avert my eyes as long as I did not have to see the darn flag as a backdrop to the arch, but wouldn’t you know, my feets took me right over to the booth to complain to the boothies. I just could not help it. (I did not realize that Allan was documenting my journey; it tickles my funnybone that he did.) I told them (almost in tears once I began) that I did not want their controversial (to some; I feel no controversy about loathing it) flag flying in photos of the arch and kites this week. They said “It should never have been taken down in the south”. I gave up on that conversation.
I went back to city hall, complained some more, to receptive ears as we are a “blue” (liberal) area of the county. My issue was that it was so visible and front and center in views of the arch and from the adjacent hotel. (By the way, we were off the work clock for all this agitation time.)
The city could do nothing, so my next kvetching stop was the kite museum at the other end of town, where I left a note for the director after having a sympathetic ear from the shop clerk. Meanwhile, two friends had also gone down to complain to the boothies, to similar no avail. One did feel she had given them something to think about when she told them she was going to send the Seahawks football team photos of their Seahawks flags flying on the same pole as the confederate flag.I took no photos of the flag showing its prominent position because I did not want to post any such photo anywhere where it could be passed around and made to look like the flag had any association with my beloved Long beach town. A friend went down and took a selfie of herself wearing one of the same booth’s “God is Not Dead” baseball caps with a backdrop of their confed flag and the Seahawks flag. It was rich in irony. Someone else proposed the good idea that a whole bunch of other banners could be somehow mounted to be between the confed flag and the iconic Long Beach arch.
We then had to go water in Ilwaco. While I watered the boatyard (and Allan watered the planters), the tune from The Wizard of Oz ran through my head with these words about how I felt when I first saw that flag flying today: My brain began to twitch, my nerves unhitched, and I went right to city hall and bitched bitched bitched.
The happy ending is that when I got home, I learned that the high-ups in the kite festival had got those boothies to take the flag down for the rest of the week. I felt so relieved.
Ilwaco
Oh, and I did take some photos while I did a weed check up on the planters and watered the boatyard.
The hoses at the boatyard were not in convenient places today, involving much dragging and screwing and unscrewing onto faucets. Oh well. I just thought about how much harder work would be if I were crab fishing on the Bering Sea instead.
It was a mighty relief to get home to good news about the flag situation. That will make tomorrow a much better day.
Wow, well done, Skyler, on the bitch bitch bitch. They should have been evicted!
And kudos to the city. 🙂
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Thanks, Steve. It was the powers that be at the kite fest that got it taken down. I assume the vendor continued to sell it. The city’s hands were tied as it was on public property. It fell within the power of the kite fest, I suppose, to ask that it not be flown.
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Good for you, Skyler for sticking to it. Although I believe in freedom of speech, for something like that which proclaims, traitorous (lol is that a word?) and racist viewpoints to be part of a public festival and in such a huge way, is in my opinion offensive to many who attend the festival. It’s a festival, not a protest.
And the south does fly the flag. Fortunately after the last massacre, South Carolina had the good graces to take the flag down from their capitol building. I hope it stays down, for the Confederate flag it is a symbol to many of slavery and oppression, and is as offensive as a Nazi flag.
There are many who call themselves patriots and hang that flag; however, they are flying a flag of traitors.
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Thanks, Debbie.
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Well done for sticking to your guns (probably an inappropriate metaphor but never mind.)
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Thanks, Mr T.
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Thanks for using the word “traitors”, Debbie, as technically it is the flag of an enemy of the United States (remember, folks, that was the flag of the Confederated States of America, with whom the United States of America was at war from 1861-1865?). Flying the US flag with the Confederate flag is not unlike flying the US flag with, say, the Rising Sun flag of Imperial Japan…oh yes it is.
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Interestingly, a someone who hopped onto my facebook thread about this and defriended me because… I don’t know why…She objected to my agitation…has the USA flag as her cover photo and recently had her fingernails done with Americsan flag decor. Born again patriots don’t seem to give any thought to the traitorous aspects of the confed flag. I’m not a nationalist so you won’t see the Stars and Stripes flying over my porch but still the confed flag is repugnant to me on the traitorism level as well.
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