670,000 flags mark COVID's toll
In today’s newsletter, maintaining Mexican female rodeo traditions in California; bringing education to Kenya's girls; the history of French dining … and the greatest song of all time.
This article is an adaptation of our weekly History newsletter that was originally sent out on September 20, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Debra Adams Simmons, Executive Editor, HISTORY
Numbers have been inescapable during the coronavirus pandemic—case counts, vaccination rates, the death toll. As of last week, one in 500 Americans had died of COVID-19. Later today or tomorrow, the United States will pass 675,000 deaths—a grim tally that equals the country’s toll from the 1918 flu pandemic, still the deadliest worldwide outbreak in modern times.
The scale of this devastation is hard to comprehend—except on the National Mall, where more than 670,000 small white flags (pictured above) flutter in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Each flag represents a life lost to COVID-19, Rachel Hartigan writes for Nat Geo.
“One of those lives is my little brother, John,” says Jeneffer Estampador Haynes (pictured below), who went to Washington, D.C., from her home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to volunteer at this memorial art installation called In America: Remember. “He was only 30.”
Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg created the installation with hundreds of volunteers to convey the extent of the loss—and to make a place where the nation can collectively grieve. “We all understand that we’ve gone through a national tragedy,” she says.
Visitors to the installation, which will be on the mall from September 17 through October 3, use one of the thousands of Sharpies on hand to dedicate a flag to someone they’ve lost to COVID-19. Those unable to travel to D.C. can make a request at the installation’s website for a flag to be dedicated for them.
Transcribing the messages is heartbreaking, says volunteer Sara Brenner of Arlington, Virginia. “You’ll get several in the same family,” she says, recalling messages she wrote for a father and a grandfather who died in February 2021, and then for two other family members who died several months later. “We’re speaking for the dead, and we’re grieving for the dead.”
For the living, the flag installation provides some solace. “It shows the world that these were our loved ones,” Haynes says. It has also shown her that even people who haven’t been directly affected by COVID-19 are mourning. “They care,” she says, “and this means a lot.”
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TODAY IN A MINUTE
Haiti border migration: it started with a rumor, later proven false, that Haitian refugees could enter the United States through one spot on its border with Mexico. Thousands of migrants—mostly Haitian—made the trek to Del Rio, Texas, creating a huge migrant camp and prompting the Biden administration to seek direct flights from there to Haiti. The flood of refugees, which Del Rio's mayor said numbered more than 14,000, has epitomized the desperation to which people have sought U.S. entry in recent months, Tucker C. Toole writes for Nat Geo. (Pictured above, a Haitian migrant leaving the camp crosses the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, back to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, on Sunday.)
Migration, continued: In Honduras, an increasing number of younger Hondurans are suffering through a “collective despair.‘’ As Anna-Catherine Brigida writes for Nat Geo, many are choosing to migrate. Others are battling against tough odds to make life better at home. And an increasing number are falling into depression. It’s a trend largely affecting the younger generation and creating concern among experts who are seeing an uptick in the number of cases among those suffering from depression who are struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Show some r-e-s-p-e-c-t: What’s the greatest song of all time? Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” according to Rolling Stone, which asked more than 250 artists, journalists, and industry figures. “Fight the Power” (Public Enemy), “A Change is Gonna Come” (Sam Cooke), “Like a Rolling Stone” (Bob Dylan) and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana) round out the top five of 500 songs on the list.
Time capsule: Virginia’s governor is placing a new time capsule where the now-removed statue of Robert E. Lee once stood in Richmond. Among the 39 items going in the capsule— designed to reflect the "historic change...that led to the removal of these monuments”— is a copy of Nat Geo's "2020 Year in Pictures" issue, which features the statue with George Floyd projected on it (photographed by Kris Graves).
How a month marking Hispanic heritage began: A college intern struggled to get enough sponsors to expand a weeklong commemoration beginning Sept. 15 to a month. In 1988, he managed to add 67 members of Congress to 100 or so who already supported it. The bill extending the commemoration to a month passed Congress—and nine days later President Reagan signed it into law. “Every year when Sept. 15 rolls around, I smile to myself,” wrote that intern-turned-journalist, Robert J. Lopez, for the Los Angeles Times.
Award winner: A photo of a Greater Roadrunner stopped in front of a U.S. wall on the border with Mexico won the Bird Photographer of the Year award. Alejandro Prieto’s image bested 22,000 other entries in the contest, BirdWatching Daily reports. See the photo.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
‘I was engaged at 5’: That’s Kakenya Ntaiya talking. The Kenyan educator and Nat Geo Explorer founded a boarding school for girls in the village of Enoosaen. Her goal over the past decade: Foist education—instead of marriage—on young girls, as Hannah Bloch wrote for Nat Geo. Pictured above, in an image from our popular Photo of the Day feature of our archived photos, Ntaiya is shown reading with fourth graders at the school.
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
Saddle up! The pageantry of Mexico’s national sport, charrería, commemorates five centuries of horsemanship. An all-female contemporary offshoot sport in the Mexican rodeo, which is popular in parts of the U.S. southwest, is known as the escaramuza charra, or skirmish.“ In it, women equestrians ride sidesaddle, kick up dust, and channel the bravery of Mexico’s revolutionary heroes, Nat Geo reports.(Above left, Crystal Del Toro rides during a sliding competition called punta; right, Elda Bueno, coach and captain for the Flor de Gardenia.)
IN A FEW WORDS
Being part of the Latino community means being proud of my roots, not to forget them. It means never stop marveling at the nature that surrounds us.
Catalina Velasco, Chilean marine biologist and photographer, co-founder of "Fundación Mar y Ciencia" (Sea and Science foundation), Nat Geo Explorer
LAST GLIMPSE
Long before Julia Child: Where did we get the concept of fine French dining? From a pastry chef, one of 25 kids in a poor Parisian family, who combined artistry, science, scholarship, and self-promotion to create a middle ground between the cuisine of royals and that aspired to by rising classes. In the early 1800s, Antonin Carême (pictured above in a lithograph) built the world’s first culinary empire—with shops, best-selling cookbooks, and dreamy pastries in the form of buildings and exotic landscapes, Nat Geo’s History magazine reports.
Today's newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams. Heather Kim selected the photographs. Have an idea or link to a story you think is right down our alley? Please let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. Happy trails!
