Keep Your Eye On the Grand Flying Flag

I was looking up something online about Tim Walz and his time as governor of Minnesota and I found this interesting flag design that, I learned, is the new state flag of Minnesota.

What? How did that happen?

It's part of a new trend among some of the states where their flags are increasingly seen as boring to redesign them and make them look more like national flags.  Most state flags have the state seal on them and little diversity or variety in colors.  Kansas, Oklahoma and Oregon have their names in really big letters on their flags to make sure that everyone Gets It.  The new Minnesota state flag, which replaced one of those old boring single-color flags with the state seal on it, shows a dark blue field representing the night skies, a light blue field representing the state's abundant waters, and an eight-pointed star representing the North Star.  

The Minnesota state flag, adopted in May 2024, was adopted two months after Utah got rid of its boring flag with the state seal against a single-color backdrop, showing a beehive in the middle of the flag to represent industry and to allude to the Mormon homeland's original proposed name, Deseret, which Brigham Young insisted was a word used by the ancient Israelite peoples of the Americas to mean, "honeybee," the bee being a symbol in Mormonism of hard work.  This is why Utah is officially nicknamed "The Beehive State" and its state motto is "Industry."  

Thus the state flags of Minnesota and Utah join interesting flags from other states, like Alaska . . . 

. . . Arizona . . .

. . . and, of course, Ohio.

And of course, I can't forget the flag of Tennessee . . .

. . . or the flag of Texas . . . 

. . . which I sometimes confuse with the national flag of Chile.

And, in keeping with the trend of new state flags, I understand that Florida may have a new flag soon.

Yes,  I went there.