Does something look different here?

Revolution 21's Blog for the People has a bit of a new look -- a new, and occasionally changing, flag at the top of the page.

The new accoutrement sprang from my looking for something more professional- and spiffy-looking to top the blog. So I finally had the inclination to explore putting art in the Blogger layout. And I started making a flag, or that banner atop the blog page.

And then I put it up. Better, but not as slick as I wanted.

So I started playing with the scanner and a box of old photos . . . and with pulling some art off a royalty-free stock-photo site. Then with setting objects on the scanner and scanning them.

NEXT THING I KNEW, I had 20 new flags to rotate atop Revolution 21's Blog for the People. And counting, I am sure.

So, every so often, you'll see something new atop the blog. Every now and again, I might explain what it is . . . and when it was.

The flag you're looking at now shows a slice of New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral, photographed by me in the spring of 1987. New Orleanians have worshipped on this site since 1718 under French rule, and in 1727, a new church building was completed and consecrated -- named for Saint Louis, King of France, otherwise known as Louis IX.

THEN CAME the great fire that burned much of the now Spanish-ruled city to the ground in 1788. Including the first St. Louis parish church, which had been New Orleans' first structure of brick-between-post construction. Rebuilt bigger and grander beginning in 1789, the "new" structure is the one we know today, albeit with various additions and a major renovation in the 1850s. It was dedicated as a cathedral and housed its first Mass on Christmas Eve, 1794.

Pope Paul VI named St. Louis Cathedral a minor basilica in 1964, and Pope John Paul II visited in 1987.