Presidents' Day's Sneak Peek

Keeping it clean this week:

 A propos of nothing, one thing among many that stood out during our recent vacation trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, was the city flag of Cuzco. We saw it flying there and at the town square of Machu Picchu Pueblo, and repeated on scarves, punchus, hats, and so forth sold in the various markets.

Somebody in our travel group asked our tour guide whether the city of Cuzco had somehow infringed on the LGBTQ community's copyright or trademark on the rainbow pride flag; but there are clear differences between the two, starting with the Inca symbol at the center of Cuzco's flag.

Cuzco's flag also has seven stripes instead of the pride flag's six. Remember the mnemonic "Roy G. Biv" for remembering the colors of the spectrum? Cuzco's flag sports red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet stripes.

It's also much older than the flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978. One of the cathedrals in Cuzco (where, unfortunately, photography is not allowed) contains a 17th-Century painting commemorating a devastating earthquake that hit Cuzco in 1650. Many Spanish colonial buildings had collapsed and burned, while ancient Inca buildings and walls withstood the 7.5-Richter scale quake.

To represent the community's determination to rebuild, the painting shows a female figure carrying a rainbow banner, evoking the rainbow Noah reportedly saw as God's promise never again to destroy the earth with a flood. 

Well, there was another strong earthquake there in 1950, but the 17th Century painter and the city fathers who chose the rainbow for their civic flag couldn't possibly have foreseen that.

Now, I did happen to see a guy, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 years old, apparently one of the groundskeepers at an Inca temple site in the Urubamba / Sacred Valley of the Incas, wearing a weather-beaten cap with an up-to-date LGBTQ+ pride flag on it — the flag with the transgender and POC chevrons on the hoist side.

Was he "family"? Maybe. Maybe not. Don't know. Didn't ask.