The story of the Stars and Stripes, as passed down through the family of upholsterer Betsy Ross, is that George Washington visited her and asked if she could create a flag from a sketch he presented. Upholsterers commonly took up other work to keep bread on the table (for a while Betsy Ross also made musket balls for the army). The finished product was adopted by the Continental Congress on this day in 1777 as the official flag of the new United States. I post here a sketch, from the Palisades neighborhood Fourth of July parade, of the Peruvian dance troupe’s young standard-bearer. The scene struck me as so, well, American.