Flag Factory

33 The sign outside claims every sovereign state on Earth flies its colors under this one roof in a United Nations of nylon. Should we imagine it a fractious place, with stalled talks between workers stitching Palestinian banners and the Star-of-David makers, knife-fights in the warehouse over whether Basque flags can be stored with Spanish, North and South Korean ensigns sewn in separate rooms? Or is the factory floor an oasis of anodyne, where stars limn crescent and stripe alike with their light and well-fed employees work side by side to embroider the emblems and crests of blood enemies as folk tunes sung in every tongue miraculously harmonize? Or do the needles simply pump through silk like tired soldiers through a battlefield’s mud, obeying the orders of distant commanders: today swastikas for a klavern in Maine, tomorrow a medical tent’s Red Cross? During shift changes, when the machinery groans to silence, we can hear the dirge that undulates beneath every anthem, and pledge allegiance to its singer’s blank standard. Flag Factory Joel Brouwer ...