Flag Day USA At the American Memorial Park, the Stars and Stripes flutter over the blue skies of the Marianas, a proud symbol of two-century long wrestling with democratic and republican governance the island join in 1976. School yards recite: "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The goose pimples experienced in the recitation of the pledge attests to the power of the rite to elicit an emotive response, a function that served the Nazis with the swastika, the sign of the cross to Catholics, the sound of the aum to the Hindus, and the prayer beads to Bodhi-holics and Muslims. Now we have the universally worn reversed head cap with oversized shirts on dangling baggy pants and the obligatory tattoo on the butt among teens of all genders! Symbols were Adolf Hitler's tools. Flags and banners flew everywhere. Because they looked either ostentatious or of no practical value, they are often spurned by our Puritan tradition as unnecessary. Banners flutter in many sacred sites in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Xizang, Sichuan, Nepal, and Bhutan. "The East is Red" was more than a policy statement in China of the 60's. Red is a color of passion and energy (worn by brides and grooms) as white stares the stark but profound silence of death, in contrast with the grief in black shown elsewhere. Green is the shade of environmental good sense, while yellow signifies the vitality of parliaments of the streets. Color resounds, flutter invigorates. Educators inform us that 80% of what we learn is by sight with sound splitting the remaining 20%, a sum of the combined total of smell, taste and touch. Visual and audio symbols are, thus, the most effective way of conveying a message. We do lack the artistry of intentional artforms compared to the mish-mash of colors thrown against schoolroom walls across the country. Then there is the endless gab on the phone by the previous generation, this age adding the text to the conversation. We now have the smartphone to thank for; at least, it has everyone preoccupied with the thumbs doing the walking rather than the tongue wagging! With the chicken flu in 20 States of the Union, and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) currently overwhelmingly Korea as its earlier cousin the SARS ripped through China not too long ago, the air mask has become the symbol of our time, worn in many places around the world, this time south of Panmunjom. We could be zeroing on the coronavirus rather than worrying who has delivery capability of a nuclear warhead! The flametrees in bloom around the auditorium at the American Memorial Park in Saipan sooth the eyes and spark the sunlight in our soul. From the familiar but stark greyness of Dong Bei skies, a stroll through the AMP by the flags, and the boats at marina cove is a priceless experience. Even Japanese businessmen work for a year just to afford a week on island. I am heading to MERS country short of a fortnight, surprisingly at first, unable to make onward and return booking June and July so I had to get UA to pull strings on my mileage plus awards. Well, what I hear is that the rate of cancellation is high but it will cost me mucho to change bookings. Instead, I will be transiting through Busan for more than a quarter of a day, and on the return, half a day in Shanghai and just a bit shorter in Guam before getting on a turboprop to Saipan. The sight and sounds of our 8x5 mile island, the weird sensation of that sand in between the toes at the lagoon (please do not step on the dark sea cucumbers, nor harvest them for soup), the regulated streetwalkers in Garapan (who said we do not have a red light district), and the occasional sailboat by the Carolinian utt, is a diversity of sunset experiences without face masks that necktie wearers in New York, scarf drapers in Paris, and curry mixers in Delhi do not offer, alas, a reality we take for granted. I shan't forget Saipan's blue skies as I cough the carbon monoxide of Beijing and Shenyang northeast of China. Our bleak Puritan perspective probably missed the colorful Flag Day in the US of A yesterday. Stars and Stripes of 50 white stars on blue representing the 50 States of the Union, and the total 13 red-white stripes representing the original 13 colonies that parted with England's royalty, leading to the creation of the nation, is a reminder that we are known and adored more for being inclusive rather than being exclusive. The smartphone is probably the closest micro-symbol of this generation, and we are only too familiar with couples sitting across each other in a restaurant busy separately fingering their LCDs. "Emojis" have entered my vocab, and "femojis" smile better than the old smileys. We know the smartphone is not very smart, but it sure gets a lot of mileage as a texter and a phone. The flag represents a nation's pride, a key symbol among my generation, but now marketed as patches that grace sleeves on shirts and the hip pockets on our pigu. Whatever. Wear your colors, and proudly! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. in all, celebrate!