Oh Say Can You See...

Every once in a while someone will remark about the prominence of our flagpole in our front yard. Usually the comment is something about whether or not we take the flag down at night. When we answer No, they respond with, "You're supposed to, you know." If they are really knowledgeable they'll quote actual law as follows.

It is Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code (4 U.S.C. §1) Section 6 (a) states:

"It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness. "

Interestingly, the US Flag Code is about as binding as Miss Manners' "Book of Modern Etiquette." It was designed to give guidance. No penalties are mentioned in the code and Supreme Court rulings have generally indicated that any enforcement would probably be rejected on the basis of free speech.

But still, what's the purpose of flying the flag if you can't see it. So this past weekend we purchased and installed a solar powered flag spotlight. I've been wanting to put up a light since we put in the pole but the problem was always getting power over to where a spotlight made sense.

The light had two components: the light itself which has two superbright LED elements and the battery pack with three rechargeable batteries and a small solar to electricity converter. This light had hardware for mounting it on the pole. But since our pole is telescoping with the smaller sections going inside the larger outer sections I couldn't figure out how to pole mount it.


Fortunately, it also came with hardware for mounting on a building such as our garage. Here I am showing that I can still climb a ladder no matter how foolish that might be. Carolyn was close at hand ready to break my fall or at least call 911.


The instructions called for a distance of six feet which worked out almost perfectly from the edge of our garage to the midpoint of the flag on the pole. I sort of held my breath about whether it would really make a difference but it does. We charged it for one full day before turning it on.

This is how it looked last night:

The picture is a little blurry because the flag was moving in the breeze.