How to prepare your flagpole for the current state of the nation
COEUR D'ALENE, ID (not the Spurious News Network, sadly) -- With two school shootings reported in the first week of the new school year, it seems apparent that everyone who flies the flag of our great nation is going to be displaying it at half staff for a very long time to come.
The military flies flags at half-staff by first raising them to full-staff, lowering them halfway for display, then raising them to full-staff before lowering them and folding them for storage. Civilians don't have to do this, so this is an easy way to get your flag to always be in the position of mourning.
Your flag connects to a rope called a halyard. First determine the diameter of it. Travel to a hardware store and buy a cable clamp. Measure the height of your flagpole from the pulley at the top - which is called a truck - to the cleat, which is the fitting toward the bottom that you wrap the halyard around to keep it in place. If you know how tall your flagpole is, measuring isn't necessary - the cleat is usually five feet above the ground. Divide this number in half and call it "half-mast." Determine the halfway point between the two clips that attach the flag to the halyard, then measure the halyard from this point to the "half-mast" distance. Attach the cable clamp there and tighten it well. Now, when you go out to fly the flag just raise it until the cable clamp hits the pulley and tie off the halyard to the cleat.
If we ever get decent gun control so fourteen-year-old kids don't have access to the tools needed to shoot up their schools, simply remove the clamp and fly your flag proudly.
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