Pomerania, Poland (October 2009)
While embarking on a fieldwork-related errand one day, I asked Mrs. S., a local mushroom-picking expert, if she knew what that head scarf represented. She quite frankly admitted that she had no idea but that it was a remittance hand-me-down from her family of migrant workers who worked on large private farms in the Norwegian countryside. I told her that it was an American flag (which came as a shock to her because the U.S. Missile Base talks were still going on in Redzikowo-only several kilometers down the road-and anti-Americanism against President Obama was quite strong). To my surprise, Mrs. S. took the American flag off the next day, but soon-after, I was happy to see that the unveiling was temporary and that Mrs. S. was happily biking into the forest to pick mushrooms in her favorite American flag head scarf. On an unrelated note, I love the wildly disfigured red fencing behind her.
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