Earlier this week, someone called in a news tip that said a Confederate flag was flying beneath an American flag in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. What they discovered was actually the red and blue-striped Norwegian flag.
The Seattle Times received this tip from New York Times best-selling author Rebecca Morris: “Hi. Suddenly there is a Confederate flag flying in front of a house in my Greenwood neighborhood. It is at the north-east corner of 92nd and Palatine, just a block west of 92nd and Greenwood Ave N. I would love to know what this ‘means’ … but of course don’t want to knock on their door. Maybe others in the area are flying the flag? Maybe it’s a story? Thank you.”
But, when they went to investigate they found that it was actually a Norwegian flag flying at the house of Darold Norman Strangeland, who raised it at the start of this year’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea as an homage to his Norwegian-American background — his parents emigrated to the states in the mid-1950s.
When Ms. Morris found out that she had mistaken the flags, she pointed to the current political climate as a possible reason for her mix-up. “Maybe that’s the story,” she told the Seattle Times. “We’re so stressed by all things political that we see things that aren’t there.”"