I sewed the Canadian flag on my backpack. After all, everyone else did.

Then while I was down there I listened to some of the things my countrypersons said about why it was there.

The primary reason seemed to be “To distinguish ourselves from American tourists.”

Yet the ones I heard most vociferously running down American tourists inevitably seemed to be engaged in the sort of stupid behaviour that such tourists were so badly ragged for.

So I cut the flag off and let people ask me, rather than have them assume I was some flag-waving jerk with a desperate need to distance myself from my North American co-citizens.

I feel no need to profess atheism on a shirt or a bumper sticker. The gradiations between atheists are too subtle to be expressed in one line.

I’ll let people ask me.

What is the email address that I can request secular values voter pins?

What surprises me is how many business around this area (Eastern Washington) put Christian bling in their logos and advertising. Brinks security here uses a cross in place of the I in Brinks (“Total Protection” is their slogan. I guess when you get broken into their systems call Jesus as well as the cops). A very large landscaping company called “Living Waters” puts biblical verses on their billboard ads, and it goes on.

Am I just surrounded by nuts or is this typical across the country?

“Member of America’s most distrusted minority”

and

“Atheist” written in all the languages that I know how to write it in.

The only atheist-gear I own (and wear) are the wristbands from Hemant!