Flag in the News!

Fellow blogger Jeremy Hammonds, on his Maine Heraldry Blog (a link to his blog can be found in the left-hand column here, under Other Blogs of Heraldic Interest), recently discussed the adoption of a flag (that in my opinion would also serve well as a coat of arms, should the city decide to go that route) by the city of Bath, Maine, on July 3, 2013.

I'm sure that Jeremy's post is at least in part because of his pride in having played a role in the design and adoption of the flag.  Given the very clean design and easy identifiability of all of its elements, I think his pride in this achievement is well-earned.

I could probably say a lot more about this new flag, but so much of it would simply repeat what Jeremy has already posted - along with a brief but interesting history of the design and the various elements, as well as the two coats of arms which served as inspirations for it - that you'd do just as well to go to his blog and read about it there.

His post, "City of Bath adopts flag," can be found at http://www.jeremyhammond.net/archives/102

Heraldry on the Internet

There’s a Facebook group that some of you may already know about; it’s called the Heraldry Hall of Shame and posters to the group will put up pictures of what they consider to be really poor coats of arms.  (You can find the Heraldry Hall of Shame on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/132206840210041/)  A recent poster there put up the “Particularly ghastly arms of Vermont.”

Now, I’ll admit that they’re not the best heraldic composition in the world by any means.  But I’m not sure that they can really be called “ghastly,” either.  Indeed, they’re pretty typical of much landscape heraldry from the era in which they were designed.  (And it is even possible to have a bit of fun with them, at least until you get caught, as I noted in this post: http://blog.appletonstudios.com/2012/02/heraldry-in-news.html)

And really, are they any worse than this coat of arms, from a near neighbor, the State of Maine?