Flags

This week I came across a flag I didn’t know, hanging in front of a house in the neighborhood. A white field with three alternating red fields expanding from the center blue circle with the Zia symbol in white. A search for flags with a Zia symbol didn’t bear any fruit, so I took a photo and made an image search. I discovered that it is the flag of Wichita, Kansas:

Wichita’s official city flag was adopted in 1937. Designed by a local artist from South Wichita, Cecil McAlister, it represents freedom, happiness, contentment and home. The blue sun in the center represents happiness and contentment. The Zia symbol for permanent ‘home’ is stitched on the blue sun. The three red and white rays that alternate from the off-center blue sun represent the path of freedom to come and go as one pleases
Flag of Wichita, Kansas – Wikipedia

I admit didn’t get a sense of home and the path of freedom from looking at the flag and was worried what it might represent. For me the flag has a slightly sinister look.

Then I came across this article, from 2019, by a TV station in Albuquerque.

People in Albuquerque, however, believe the artist simply tweaked our Zia and took credit for the work.

KRQE News 13 did ask Wichita Tourism officials if they suspect the artist ripped off the Zia Symbol back in the ’30s, but they chose to ignore that question.

Now, the Zia Pueblo says it’s looking into the creation.
Stolen symbol? Wichita uses Zia look-alike on city flag | KRQE News 13

This bears interesting similarity to the English flag copying the design of the flag of Genoa – link to my post. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is to never trust a flag?

Where Land and Sky Meet


JaneParham commented “Reminds me of recent views in Santa Fe.”

Very perceptive. :-)
After two days of flying I arrived in Albuquerque on Friday, in the early afternoon. I drove to my luthier in Santa Fe and picked up my Negra guitar, which had been repaired and for which he obtained a new carbon-fiber case. I played the Negra almost exclusively for a decade, from 2002. It’s the guitar I recorded One Guitar with, for example. I drove to the adobe where I was staying and started familiarizing myself with the guitar I had not played in many years. (The plan had been to take the guitar with me to Lisbon for June and July, but unforeseen problems arose that made this impossible, so I actually hadn’t played guitar at all for eight weeks)

I was in town to celebrate my friend Roshi Joan‘s 80th birthday, and to perform with Kaz Tanahashi. He paints and I play guitar. Instead of accompanying a dancer or singer I react to a sage who wields giant brushes. When it works we don’t know who initiated the gesture: did I react to his movement or did he react to the sound I made. We did such a performance for Roshi’s 75th birthday and she loved it and requested an encore for the 80th.

I took the above photograph with my phone at the end of a four mile walk through the old neighborhood yesterday morning.