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The flag, as anyone could see, has 15 stars and 15 stripes. It is a replica of the American flag that flew over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry during the famed Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812.
It’s the flag, in other words, now known as the Star-Spangled Banner, that is displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. The flag that, on the night of Sept. 13, 1814, inspired Francis Scott Key, who was on a British ship in Baltimore Harbor, to write the words that would become our national anthem.
I’m sorry that the caption writer either did not know that fact or didn’t deem it worthy of mentioning.
The writer is the author of “Flag: An American Biography.”
Confusion reaches a high-water mark
The April 10 front-page article “Historic snow could flood vulnerable Calif. valleys,” said “Farmers have been pacing along the levees on their land around the clock.” Really? And, “For many communities across the valley, there is not much they can do about the looming catastrophe except wait.” Much later in the article, “advancements such as more accurate data about snowpack and more detailed forecasting, as well as the district’s own modeling, have allowed officials to manage flows along the river with more confidence and less guesswork.”
The basic framing needed to explain that the California’s Central Valley is composed of two drainages. The northern portion, the Sacramento, flows south. The southern valley, the San Joaquin, flows north. They meet in the Delta before flowing west to San Francisco Bay.
Even having lived in the Pacific Northwest for the majority of my life, plus 12 years in California, I struggled to understand the jumping back-and-forth reporting. Maps would have helped.
Frank Brodersen, Springfield
Shakespeare was here already
I was surprised to read in Peter Marks’s April 6 Style review, “Shakespeare Theatre’s ‘King Lear’ is a crowning achievement,” that director Simon Godwin credited himself and his latest endeavor with finally delivering Shakespeare worth watching to a D.C. audience. “Any question about there not being the audience in Washington for major Shakespeare — there’s not the capacity, there’s not the hunger for really deep, dark, complex work: Yes, yes, yes, there is,” he told Marks. As Lear himself might say, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”
Considering what the review referred to as Godwin’s “British sensibility,” perhaps he should be forgiven his ignorance of the long-standing and enduring tradition of great Shakespearean theater led by the legendary Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company for more than three decades. Perhaps Godwin is unaware that the world-renowned Folger Shakespeare Library is located here in D.C. and served as the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s home for years of sold-out performances. For many years, area elementary and high school students excitedly appeared in the Folger’s annual festival, performing scenes from the Bard’s works on that same stage. Natha Swinton, our kids’ teacher at Robert Brent Elementary School, relished preparing and watching her students strut their stuff.
Clearly, the hunger for great Shakespeare was here long before Godwin crossed the herring pond.
Kevin McCormally, Washington
Out! Let! Double fault! All of them!
I was very disappointed that the April 10 Sports section did not mention Frances Tiafoe’s second ATP tour title at the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships in Houston, which elevated him to No. 11 in the world, a career high. It has been a very long time since a D.C.-area player has reached such a high ranking.
Tiafoe is from Hyattsville. His parents immigrated from Sierra Leone, and his father worked as a maintenance man at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, where Tiafoe learned to play. His meteoric rise in tennis from such humble beginnings is well known in the U.S. tennis community.
On the same day, The Post did mention the wins of Casper Ruud from Norway and Roberto Carballés Baena from Spain at the same level of tournaments as Houston.
Samuel J. Barish, Rockville
The writer is a U.S. Tennis Association and Intercollegiate Tennis Association tennis official.
Maybe AI can tell us which fork to use for the salad
I was happy that President Biden had better things to do than comment on Donald Trump’s arraignment in New York, as reported in the April 6 news article “Democrats cheer Biden’s response to Trump indictment.” But a curious sentence in the first paragraph of the article left me wondering whether Biden’s meeting with top science and technology advisers was perhaps too narrowly focused:
“By the time Donald Trump appeared before a judge to face 34 felony counts, Biden was meeting with top science and technology advisers to talk about artificial intelligence in the State Dining Room.”
Will ChatGPT be creating the menus? Will robots be delivering the storied Senate bean soup? Or was this just another example of poor writing in The Post?
He never gets too close to the sun
It is always a delight when David Von Drehle takes flight [“When doom is in fashion, joy becomes countercultural,” op-ed, April 2]. “The thing with feathers,” indeed, flouting Icarus.
J. Marvin Watts, Bluemont, Va.
By George, I think he’s got it
The great early 20th-century American artist George Bellows is often overshadowed by Edward Hopper and Robert Henri, so it was a delight to see Post critic Sebastian Smee put a spotlight on a Bellows bridge painting now at the Toledo Museum of Art in his April 9 Arts & Style column headlined “George Bellows captured New York like no other artist.”
In analyzing “The Bridge, Blackwell’s Island” (1909), Smee referred to the “mayhem,” “lurching energies” and “brute power” of Bellows’s work.
It should be of interest to area art fans that the National Gallery of Art has a number of powerful Bellows works, including the brutal, racially tinged boxing painting “Both Members of This Club.” That large work can be described as “mayhem” personified.
Okay, maybe he doesn’t got it
How lovely to be treated on Sunday mornings to Sebastian Smee’s series of articles, “Great Works in Focus,” on some of history’s most influential artists on the front page of the Arts & Style section. I am in regular awe and admiration of Post writers (of all sections) who do a superb job of making us smarter and better every day for such a small cost to us.
But I was disappointed that the long exposé on Pablo Picasso by Smee ignored Picasso’s exposure to and strong influence by sub-Saharan African art. This is a fairly well-documented, if not widely recognized, phenomenon.
Yes, Picasso owes his “innovations” to Africans. “How should we view Picasso?” asked the April 9 headline on Smee’s piece. Many of us would answer, “Good enough to be the original cultural appropriator.”
Kristin M. Kane, Alexandria
I liked the old ‘drop’ better
Over the past year or two, I have watched with amusement as the verb “drop” has come to be used to indicate that something has been added rather than discontinued. For example: “Harry Styles drops an album.” Now I see that The Post has jumped on this bandwagon. An April 6 front-page headline proclaimed “In Georgia, sprawling case could drop soon.”
I began reading the article to learn what factors may have caused the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., to “drop” her investigation of Donald Trump’s potential interference with the 2020 election. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the headline meant that the district attorney was expected to announce in the next few weeks whether she will file charges in this matter.
I guess to “drop” the case means to proceed with the case. George Orwell would be proud.
Puck to the forehead? No biggie.
Thanks to Roman Stubbs for the wonderful article about hockey in Hershey, Pa., [“Hershey hockey: Always sweet,” Sports, April 5].
In late 1964, I attended my first pro hockey game at the original Hershey Arena, having driven there from Millersville, Pa., with fellow members of my high school Key Club. In the first period, the puck sailed over the glass partition and struck a middle-aged fan on his forehead. We boys stared down from our upper-deck seats as blood gushed, and the fan, directly below us, was led away for medical attention.
Midway through the third period, to my surprise, the injured fan walked unaided back to his seat with a white bandage wrapped around his head. He sat down and watched the remaining minutes like the devoted fan he was.
Chocolatetown U.S.A. — still a hockey lover’s dream venue almost 60 years later.
Bill Beppler, Dayton, Va.
Leana S. Wen wrote an excellent column calling for 75 minutes per week of activity incorporated into daily routines, “The 75-minute solution (to a longer life)” [oped, April 8], and the photograph that accompanied it was of a woman riding a $1,500 Peloton — an option available for about 2 percent of the population. How does that relate to Wen’s message? It would have been better to show someone walking up stairs. Great article, bad photo.
Jimmy Daukas, Takoma Park
This Bordeaux, not that Bordeaux
I loved the photo montage of French winemakers in Saint-Émilion lighting thousands of candles in an effort to save their precious grapes from an unexpected April freeze that accompanied the April 8 news article “Lighting candles, saying a prayer.” But one quick clarification on the confounding French wine classification system: Though it is true that the Saint-Émilion region is about 30 miles from the city of Bordeaux, the area is considered part of the broader Bordeaux wine region under the French system of appellations.
In Saint-Émilion, estates located in Bordeaux’s “right bank” east of the Gironde estuary and north of the Dordogne river produce outstanding, generally Merlot-driven red blends, which complement the predominantly cabernet sauvignon-based blended wines of the “left bank” in Bordeaux’s Medoc region north of the city of Bordeaux and west/south of the Gironde.
The April 6 Drawing Board cartoon was pithy. Right on. That was an award-winning drawing that summed up the arraignment of former president Donald Trump in a powerful image. Excellent work by Clay Bennett.
Deanie McCarthy, Silver Spring
Why was a drawing of a fingerprinted hand in the cartoon space? I am neutral on the issue I believe the cartoon was trying to represent, but I think no one would think this is funny.
Coverage of the XFL’s D.C. Defenders is usually limited to the Digest, and even that is just a very minimal overview of a recent game. This is baffling, especially given The Post’s own polling showing that the popularity of the Washington Commanders football team is plunging. The popularity of the Defenders is surprising given that the team has existed for only a few years. Yet callers to sports radio are very enthusiastic. And many fans showed up to the first home game this season already decked out in Defenders gear! Recent Defenders games have also been broadcast on ESPN.
Given the dumpster-fire nature of the Commanders franchise, and the fact that even new ownership is not guaranteed to turn things around, it would seem to be in the best interest of The Post to include more, and more detailed, coverage of the Defenders games. That would be a win/win/win for The Post, the fans and the Defenders franchise!
Jennifer Gittins-Harfst, Annandale
The recent news about the increase in U.S. postage rates underplayed the importance of the humble postcard, whose rate will increase to 51 cents from 48 cents [“In latest rate hike, Postal Service will raise the price of a stamp to 66 cents,” news, April 12].
You have probably heard of the phrase “penny postcard.” The reason? Except for two years, it cost 1 cent to mail a postcard from 1873 to 1952. No wonder billions of postcards were mailed during this period. During the “golden age” of postcards, the average cost to purchase one was 1 cent. Now, when you are lucky to get by paying $1 for a postcard plus the additional cost of postage, you might as well snap a photo with your phone and message it.
I have no doubt that postcard racks will soon become a vestige of the past and, with them, the loss of a tactile piece of ephemera that documents via image, the written word and a postage stamp the times we live in.
Jerry A. McCoy, Silver Spring
Any old headline just won’t do
The April 7 front-page article reporting on the expulsion of two African American members of the Tennessee legislature read “Uproar, reprisal at Tenn. Capitol” instead of “2 Black Legislators ousted in Tenn.”
The headline did not inform the reader what happened. It could have been about a demonstration instead of the removal of elected legislators by members of the other party.
I don’t remember The Post’s Nov. 22, 1963, extra edition headline being “Noise, outrage in Dealey Plaza.”
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