Tag: seal

North Dakota

Simplify.

North Dakota’s flag is yet another crappy flag, created by just slapping emblems on a blue background and calling it a flag. In this case, they spelled out the name of the state (sigh), added a direct copy of the eagle from the U.S. seal, even down to the “E Pluribus Unum” motto (SIGH), and threw in thirteen stars, because… Betsy Ross (SIGH)! There almost nothing remotely original or distinctive about it.

Almost.

The solution was… simple. Remove the name. Remove the U.S. Seal and Motto. Remove all but one of the stars, and enlarge it. And enlarge the halo/crown to match. There ya go!

American Samoa

Not all bad flags need a major overhaul. Sometimes you have a cromulent flag design that’s spoiled by just one thing. That’s American Samoa’s.

American Samoa is a territory of several islands that you probably know nothing about, except maybe that Mike Bloomberg and Tulsi Gabbard won the delegates in its Democratic presidential caucus. It’s an odd place. It’s in the south Pacific Ocean, kinda sorta near New Zealand, but just east of the International Date Line. About 55,000 U.S. citizens – most of Samoan ancestry – live there.

We have to call it American Samoa because there’s also Just Plain Samoa, the part of the archipelago which was ruled by New Zealand until it gained independence in the 1960s. American Samoa does most of its trade with the rest of the U.S., and gets financial support from the federal government, so it seems destined to remain an imperial territory indefinitely. After tuna fishing, joining the U.S. military then collecting veterans’ benefits seems to be part of their economic model.

To be honest, I just don’t like the eagle on the flag. It’s an attempt to incorporate the U.S. Seal into the design, which is generally a bad idea: seals don’t belong on flags (unless maybe it’s an actual seal). Also, there are no eagles in the Samoan islands, so it doesn’t represent the territory in any way. With its attacking profile, it seems overly militaristic, which is just a bad thing to enshrine in a banner. (I wasn’t surprised to find that the design was chosen by the Army after World War 2.) And ultimately, the flag looks fine without it.

Minnesota

Blech. Minnesota’s flag is yet another “shield on a field”, and the fact that the blue field is a little lighter than most of the other crappy flags of this kind doesn’t save it. Especially because the seal in the middle is an incredibly bad design, too.

Let’s name the problems: The name of the state is spelled out. It does some inscrutable stuff with the number of stars, themselves in a star pattern. The seal includes three different years… I have no idea what they all represent, and no one else knows or cares either. There’s a motto in there too. And the scene in the middle has so many symbolic bits in it that you can’t read it, even if at full size. (Trust me.) Blech.

Fortunately I don’t have to fix this, because someone else has already done it.

Rev. William Becker and Lee Herold designed and proposed a replacement, which has received some popular support in the state. Wikipedia explains: The star represents “L’etoile du Nord” and Minnesota’s natural wealth, the blue background represents Minnesota’s lakes and rivers, the white represents winter, and the green represents farmland and forests. The waves represent the name Minnesota, a Dakota word which means “sky-tinted waters”. There’s more behind it. This is a good flag, Minnesota: stop spinning your wheels and go for it.

Prince Edward Island

If there’s any set of flags proportionally worse than American state flags, it’s Canadian provincial flags. I have family in Canada, so I feel I’m obligated to fix that problem too.

The flag of Prince Edward Island is a “what the fuck is going on here?” flag. Especially if you view it on a white background (which I’m doing as I type this… I gave this web site a gray background for this very reason), it doesn’t even make sense. That alternating red/white border on three sides with the red and white backgrounds is just… inscrutable. It doesn’t work, at all.

The interior is then simply a bunch of symbolic “huh?” At the top is an English royal lion (passant and or, on a gules field) a heraldry symbol of the Prince Edward the place is named for), and the main portion is a drawing of little island with three little oak trees (symbolizing the three geographic sections of Prince Edward Island) and a big strong oak tree (Great Britain) protecting them. Way to suck up to the royals, Edwardians.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but Canada is no longer ruled or protected or mentored in any way by Great Britain. They’ve kept the old queen on, calling her the Queen of Canada, but that’s not at all the same thing. It’s long past time for the Canadian provinces to drop the various emblems of the former British Empire… and also any sucking-up, while we’re at it.

We start by eliminating the damn lion, of course. And since we’re dealing with a troublesome white field, we need to reinforce that red border a bit… top and bottom will do. That leaves us with the baby-oak-trees parable, which at this point is best chucked into the Atlantic. PEI (or at least Canada as a whole) can take care of itself now, so here it is represented by the silhouette of a singular oak leaf, on its own. Does this remind you of any other flags related to Canada in some way?

(Now, if you have really bad eyesight and squint, you might see the outline of Prince Edward Island in the oak leaf. On the other hand, if you have normal vision, you will see nothing of the sort: PEI looks nothing like this – and it looks even less like the island shown in the old flag. Which is good, because flags should not include maps. Yes, Cyprus: I’m looking at you.)