The Subliminal Eagle
A year or two ago I was standing before the cage of a bald eagle in Lincoln Park Zoo. The poor bird is crippled and can’t fly anymore, so it just sits there. You can imagine my surprise when the lady next to me exclaimed in a nostalgic and patriotic mood that this was “the symbol of our freedom.” Really? Crippled and encaged?
How amazingly different it was to see a wild bald eagle in California last week. Now that, I can see, is a symbol for freedom, power and might.
Ever since I was a little boy I have been fascinated by bald eagles; maybe more by its strong symbolism. Last week’s trip to California reminded me why. As we drove on the 101 in Southern California, close to Malibu and the famed Highway 1, we passed a sign dedicating that part of the highway to the 101st Airborne Division, or as they are known, the Screaming Eagles.
This division played a major role in liberating the Netherlands from the Nazis during Operation Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far is still one of my favorite movies), as they dropped near Eindhoven and Veghel to take important strategic points and bridges.
Of course I wasn’t there to live through those events, but reading about it as a little kid sparked my imagination. And for years there was a museum in Veghel that now is located in Best about the “Wings of Liberation.” The 101st Airborne Division’s insignia features the head of a bald eagle (see above) and that image has always stuck in my mind. So when I saw the bald eagle in the wild last week, the two images (one live, one from memory) were subliminally connected.
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