First, Flag Day. Why do we have it? We celebrate Flag Day on June 14-- it marks the adoption of the American flag by the Continental Congress in the First Flag Act passed on June 14, 1777.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation officially establishing June 14 as Flag Day. Even so, Flag Day was never formally established as a federal holiday so everything will be open and you'll still get the mail.
If you're putting a flag up, here's a couple of things to remember:
1. Traditional guidelines call for displaying the flag in public only from sunrise to sunset. Sunset right now is around 8:30 pm.
2. You can keep it up after sunset, but you need to have a light on it. My floodlight on my flag is on a dusk to dawn timer, and I use an LED spotlight to save money over a traditional light bulb.
3. According to the Veteran's Administration, it should not be displayed during rain, snow and wind storms, unless it is an all-weather flag. If a storm is coming, I try to take mine down, so it doesn't get ripped off my house.
4. It should be raised briskly and lowered ceremoniously.
And, of course, Flag Day is just a precursor to Independence Day, so you should be all squared away when July 4th rolls around in a couple of weeks!
BTW, if you have a flag that you can't lower to half-staff (hopefully we don't need to for a while), you can always check out what to do on my Facebook post from a while back: