Hello, everyone.
Welcome to this August edition of This Month In Flag News.
I'm Vexillographer, and we begin our show today with our top story coming out of Fiji,
a nation in the South Pacific Ocean.
Now, Fiji has been involved in a flag change process for over a year now led by the government
of Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who believes that the Union Jack is not appropriate
for the symbol of an independent non-colonial Fiji.
Because, you know, they're not a British colony anymore.
That's his argument.
He wants a purely Fijian flag instead of something with the Union Jack on it.
But, they've run into a few bumps along the road.
Bump number one, after they originally released 23 finalist designs last year, people weren't
exactly satisfied with those designs.
So they decided to extend the flag submission period, so hopefully get designs that people
would be happy with.
Well, that didn't totally work out either, because in February–right before they were
about to announce five finalist designs.
In February, Cyclone Winston hit Fiji.
It was a Category 5 cyclone.
We call them hurricanes in North America.
They're called typhoons in Asia.
They're bad.
And it cost about 1.4 billion dollars in damage and losses, which is about a third of Fiji's
entire national GDP.
So obviously, that was kinda more important for the government to focus on than changing
this.
But the final nail in the coffin happened this month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during
the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
A brand new event this year in the Olympics was the rugby sevens event, and Fiji's rugby
team won that nation's first gold medal in their entire history.
Yeah!
Their first Olympic gold medal!
And Fijians were super excited about this, and you can see Fijians waving the national
flag–this current national flag–all over the place.
And they were super excited, waving the flag with pride and happiness.
And this may have led to the Prime Minister finally releasing a statement on August 17.
He said that he was deeply moved by seeing this show of national pride and patriotism.
No more flag change; they're keeping this one.
Reason number 1: Fijians seem to like it.
Reason number 2: they should probably be focused on rebuilding and stuff after the cyclone.
That's probably a little more important than changing a flag.
Our next story comes from China.
Well, actually, our next story comes from Brazil, 'cause this also happened at the Rio
de Janeiro Olympic Games.
So, at the Olympics they have this thing called a medal ceremony: a way to honor the athletes
who won medals by first of all giving them their medals, but also playing national anthems
and showing their national flags and things like that.
So, people noticed early on in the Olympics that the Chinese flag being used at medal
ceremonies was wrong.
If you look closely at the actual Chinese flag, you'll see four small stars pointed
towards the big star.
However, the design they were using in the Rio Olympics had all the stars pointing up
instead of towards the star.
Which normally isn't something you'd notice; there usually aren't that many vexillologists
in a crowd.
But this is kinda the Olympics, one of the largest international sporting events in the
world.
People noticed.
So, the Olympic organizers apologized, and they were embarrassed, and they fixed the
error.
They fixed it.
It didn't happen again.
Until it did.
Because near the end of the Olympics, in the women's volleyball medal ceremony, they used
the same incorrect flag design.
And people noticed.
So they got embarrassed again.
Which brings me to an apology I need to make.
China, I'm sorry, I...
I've gotten your flag wrong, too.
I... in my second most popular video on my channel, "Construction Paper World Flags",
I was making flags out of paper for fun, from memory.
From memory.
And I got the stars wrong, too.
I didn't know about the pointing-towards-the-stars rule; I was guessing.
And I got pretty much the exact opposite; I pointed them away from the star.
And I'm supposed to be the flag expert.
I'm supposed to be the flag guy and I got it wrong.
So China, please accept my apology.
Uh, how do you say it?– "baoqian".
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
Let's move on to our next story and get rid of that guilt.
Our final few stories today come from the United States.
The first one specifically comes from the United States state of Oregon, where the city
of Albany apparently has adopted a city flag.
All right, an American city adopting a flag.
Let's... see what it looks like...
Hey.
Hey!
That's not bad, that's...
That's a good flag.
This is news.
American city adopts good flag.
All right, well, let's see what it means.
Okay, we've got: the blue represents rivers coming together, the grey bars represent highways
coming together.
And the grey also represents the city's place in the rare metals industry.
Okay, just learned something about Albany.
The tree...color...the green is...
The green represents trees, apparently.
Guys, that's a decent flag.
That's kinda rare; it's a sight for sore vexillological eyes.
So, who are the geniuses behind this?
"The Greater Unified Albany Vexillological Association", or GUAVA.
GUAVA?
Guys, that is the best vexillological association acronym I've ever seen.
GUAVA.
Guys, your flag design game is not only on point, your acronym game is on point.
That's like NASA-level expertise in acronyms.
Your acronym is like the opposite of OWCA.
Guys, you've won the flag battle; you got a decent flag for your city.
That's a victory right there.
Now you guys need to go into acronyms.
Seriously.
May I suggest naming yourselves the Greater Unified Albany Acronym Association, or GUAAA.
No, no, that's not gonna work.
The Greater Unified Albany Association of Acronym-Making, or GUAAAM?
No, no, you guys live in Oregon, that doesn't make any sense at all.
Um, the Greater Albany... the Great United Albany... the Albany...
People... the Greater Albany Naming Guys...
no, no, no, no, the Great... the Great, the Albany, the Albany's Great... the Greatest
Unified Albany Club of Acronym Makeovers, Like, Ever!
Can I join you guys?
Anyway.
Please, GUAVA, bless the world with your flag skills.
Bless the world with your acronym skills.
Share your GUAVA... juice with all of us.
If you just do the flag stuff, that's cool too.
Anyway, good work.
That's awesome.
Good job, guys.
Next, we go to the U.S. state of Missouri, where the city of Joplin is not having an
official flag design contest.
But a citizen of Joplin is holding an unofficial flag contest for the city.
So, the guy's name is Jeremy...
"Haun", "Haun", I don't know, we'll just go with Jeremy.
Jeremy has started his own flag design contest for Joplin, his hometown, out of his love
for his hometown.
He says when he travels the world, he sees people with the flags of their cities on jewelry,
on clothing, on tattoos even, and he said in a recent Joplin Globe article, "I want
that.
I want a symbol of our city that I can wear when I travel, whether it's traveling to New
York or Chicago or to Belfast, Ireland, wherever I'm going.
I can wear that, and somebody can say, 'That is cool.
What is that?'
And I can say, that's the city flag of Joplin."
So, that's Jeremy's little dream, I guess, right now.
To get a city flag for Joplin.
But he does not expect it to be officially adopted by the city of Joplin because of an
unexpected twist.
What he didn't know when he started this contest was that the city of Joplin already has a
flag.
All right, so let's see it– AAAAH!
AAAH!
OHH!
Ohh!
Oh!
Ah.
Ohh.
Yikes.
Ugh.
Ehh.
I'm sorry, everyone, I shoulda had a jumpscare warning before that.
Okay.
So let's unpack this.
We've got a blue background–of course–with a red map of the state of Missouri with a
little star in the corner showing where Joplin's located, with the word "Joplin" in this enormous...um..."font",
I guess you could call it.
Underneath the state map of Missouri is some Latin phrase, because as we all know, most
people in Missouri speak Latin.
Everyone knows that.
On the right, we've got some kind of banner from Party City.
And inside the state map, we've got the city seal of Joplin.
And inside the seal of Joplin we've got the coat of arms of Joplin.
And in the coat of arms of Joplin we have this banner that says "Zinc Is King".
And underneath the phrase "Zinc Is King" is, in the smallest font I've ever seen on an
official flag, the phrase "Adopted 1917".
Wow.
Okay.
So, maybe Jeremy is on to something by having this flag design contest.
Maybe they could adopt a flag that, you know, works as a flag.
But guess what?
The mayor of Joplin, Mr. Richard Russell, wants to shut down Jeremy's contest.
Why?
Well, here are a couple reasons that he gave in the same article.
"Russell said the late Donald Clark 'spent countless hours designing Joplin's current
flag'."
Yeah.
That would take me countless hours, too.
Oh man, I misspelled zinc again, I gotta start all over.
He went on to say, "Many council people have worn that flag as a lapel pin.
Many citizens of Joplin have been given the flag pin at award ceremonies.
Hundreds of people around the country and the world have asked for this flag pin.
People at national and state conferences have sought out the Joplin delegation to ask for
one of our flag pins."
Mr. Richard, um, you're talking about one of these?
These...
these tiny lapel pins?
Can you see that?
Like, you're talking about one of these, right?
I'll tell you why, Mr. Mayor, why everyone wants to see your flag pin.
That's a marvel of technological engineering.
Look at that.
How did you get that design onto one of these?
How did you do that?
Did you use zinc-powered nanobots to write "Adopted 1917" in .0005 font?
Mr. Mayor, that's why everyone wants to see this pin.
Sign me up, too.
I want to see this pin too.
Add me to the list.
I need to see it.
So, Jeremy has said he didn't want to cause a stir; he's just doing this out of his love
for Joplin.
I for one believe him.
Mr. Jeremy sir, don't worry about the nanobot-manufactured flag pins.
They're a technological marvel, but your love of Joplin is greater.
I believe in you, Jeremy.
So, if you want to encourage him in his Joplin love, you can go to joplinflag.com and submit
a design before September 8 if you're interested.
And finally, we go to the U.S. state of Illinois, where the city of Naperville is announcing
that they have selected five finalist designs in their very own flag contest.
So if you live in Naperville or know someone who does, let 'em know to go to napervilleflag.org
to vote on the five designs.
And the deadline is August 31, and after that we shall see which of those designs replaces
this thing.
And don't worry: all five of them are way better the thing they have now.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me on this August edition
of This Month In Flag News.
I'm Vexillographer.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good day, and good night.