A friend's father-in-law would support an amendment to criminalize flag-burning. My friend's counter-argument is that on Fourth of July he--the father-in-law, but presumably also the friend--wipes his mouth on flag napkins, and how can burning be so much worse than that?
If you burn the flag, I damn well hope you're doing so to exercise your First Amendment rights. If you use a flag napkin, you're probably only showing ignorance through patriotism, like those who display a flag any which way, flouting the code.
Last night I delivered RDC's old bike to an underfed, deserving intern (both adjectives do apply, but it was to an underfed moose and a deserving porcupine that Harold gave the remainder of his purple pies) and scampered for some groceries. When I left, just after 8, I saw the most amazing sunset. Actually I didn't see the sun, behind thousands of feet of storm clouds, at all. It gilded the translucent edges of two prominent towers and its light streamed between them, their two broad shadows striped the sky all the way to the eastern horizon, light, dark, light, dark, light. The eastern horizon was here marked by the Cherry Creek Mall, and it was still fabulously beautiful. It didn't hurt that, away to the west, in the mass from which the towers grew, lightning streaked.
The flat still makes me nervous, that there is nothing to contain me should I leak outside my own edges. But being able to see miles of sky, horizon to horizon, and an entire bowl of sunset rather than a wedge, makes up for a lot.