I inherited my uncle's American flag, a big thing that's seen lots of wear in it's day, but I was always happy to stick it up on the house on the 4th of July and such.  Had it up during the days after 9/11, but it came down--and stayed down, with the invasion of Iraq.

Today, after rummaging around for several hours, I located the old flag amongst the boxes of stuff down in the basement, and a flagpole, and happily stuck it into the porch bracket.  But it wasn't gonna survive for long--

The bush under it had grown too high.

So there I was, out there in the knee-deep Indiana snow, lopping down that criminal bush, and relishing every moment of cutting it down to size, low enough to let that old flag fly freely, unsnagged, and undamaged. 

Happy Inauguration, everyone!