Art vs. Artifice

Look its dancing!

Maybe its just blowing in the wind

Sprouting up this Summer all over Mac-Grove have been the oddest things. At first I thought someone had dinged a car into a stop sign pole . . . and then using a Leatherman peeled parts of the metal away from it . . .and then rusted it? No, that can't be. As I sat staring at what was a perfectly good pole, now turned into a rusty scrap heap, I thought two thing, 1) why would someone do that to a Stop sign pole? and 2) when are they going to fix it? I am still asking.

Lo and behold, I find out that these pieces of recyclable matter are actually art. Well, how about that. Of course, what you want people who are approaching a controlled traffic intersection, driving a couple of tons of vehicular heft to do is to see (be distracted by?) art. I am hoping for the Mona Lisa Yield sign. A stop light that changes from Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker (green go) to Monet's Haystacks (yellow slow) to Edvard Munch's The Scream (red Stop!). 

And art I guess it is. Art in the same way my child brings some twisted piece of metal rope and birch bark home from Scout camp that sits on the mantle for a couple of years. Art in the school of Detroit-abandoned-industrial-failed city-Robocop chic. My wife suggests they may have found the metal near some of the canyon-sized potholes we saw this Spring in our fair city. Maybe.

Alas, it is the usual story. While the City Parks department is losing $800,000.00 to a coffee shop because they couldn't find anyone to read a contract and while the City is whining about a 10 million dollar deficit (that's $10,000,000.00 for those who are visual), the City is paying an artist to molest its stop sign poles. Or maybe it's the State, or the Federal government or the UN. The only thing that is certain is it's you. Why does this happen? Well, in a one-party City there is no opposition. No one to complain about the potholes, the plowing, the deficit, the nutshell attorneys or the vandalism in the name of art to stop signs. There is only one thing left to say.

Stop.

Urban in the Suburban

I have been working the past few weeks in a Southwest suburb of the Twin Cities. I have had a chance to observe the driving behavior of the suburbanite in its natural habitat and I have to say, I have found it wanting.

What's with all the anger?

I hate love to stereotype, so, I will state the angriest species of driver is the 31-42 year old male, facial-haired, baseball-capped, driving a white pick-up truck. This particular animal likes to blow through a stop light, and not by a little, and then give you the finger. He zigs and zags from lane to lane on 494 or the Crosstown with an aggressiveness that is pathological. He acts like everyone in his way is an enemy and laws do not apply to him. Did I mention his truck is white.

Now I have long held that males between the age of 16 and 30 are mentally ill when it comes to driving. I suffered from the malady myself. But one does reach an age when driving becomes a sanctuary. It's not work, its not home. One looks forward to it. While driving you can listen to what you want, I prefer books on tape (more about that in a later post), you can listen to the radio or be alone with your own thoughts. I even know a guy who does the rosary every day on the way to work. God bless him, and I mean that, but that's too much bead work for me. The point is he is doing what he wants and I can do what I want before getting to the craziness of co-workers at work or being attacked by kids and wife at home. 

These suburban pips driving in there white symbols of generative power must have a better place to be then the truck, 494 or the Crosstown. Is it a man-cave (i.e. lower level of a split level hell). What do they do there? My guess: put on a baseball cap and play Call of World of Warcraft IX; the Legend of Duty (L.A. Pimp Edition). Or maybe its off to softball with the boys and a blooming onion at Chili's afterward. Or is it off to the Cineplex to see Marvel's Agents of DC Comics III, the Dark Pawn. Hard to say.

Either way, what is clear is they have not shed the mental illness of youth, or much else of youth come to think of it. They have no need to be alone with their thoughts, work does not stress them and family is not yet a responsibility. I wonder if these "men" will every take up the mantel of adulthood. I look around and wonder. 

They seem to be part of a generation of boy/men who watch comic book movies, dress in sports jerseys, storm off-world planets in video games and speed through life in their truck, deadened to the concern of others. Three generations ago, real boys, 18 year-olds, stormed the beaches on D-Day, fought through the Battle of the Bulge, island hopped across the Pacific and raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Hard to imagine those who came back, those whose buddy's died next to them, those who fought for others, being anything less than men. Hard to imagine the white pickup driver could understand. 

To one, the rosary was comfort in the dark. To the other its, at best, a rear-view mirror decoration.

“Danger, Will Robinson!”

Part of the un-joy of living in the City is the following: speeding through the neighborhood last night a car slowed down and smashed the back window out of our Suburban. It may have been with a gun or a bat or a golf club. 

Who knows?

We got the license plate number and call the police who were less than enthusiastic about pursuing the perps. This is the second time in a month I have had contact with the City's finest and the second time their response has been to talk me out of pursuing any action. 

Odd that is.

The first incident involved a gentlemen who swerved twice in front of my minivan on St. Clair almost hitting us, and jump out of his car and punched my window (what is it with windows?) The officer who arrived on the scene, when he looked up from his iPhone, said there was really nothing he could do. I said to him, go talk to the puncher, scare him a little and maybe do a warrant check. Its called community policing.

I love cops. I use to represent the Union that represented them, I was a prosecutor and have worked with police officers for over 20 years. I have raised my children to respect police officers. What I don't understand is why there now appears to be an ethos in the City police force to not pursue "minor" violent acts. Why not look up the licence plate of the perps who smashed my window, go to the house and using a little creative questioning find out who was in the car that night. Search the car. Do a warrant check.

Community policing means enforcing the nuisance crimes to make the quality of life better for everyone in the City. How about enforcing the low level violent crimes?

Who speaks for the minivan?

"Start seeing minivans" is a bell ringing. 

My hometown, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for the past couple of decades has spent its time and my treasure making sure pedestrians, bikers, joggers, skateboarders and any mode of traveler, other than the motor vehicle drivers, have had every whim, restricted lane, traffic circle and rabbit hole of expenditure met while forgetting about the father or mother coming home from work, going to a hockey game, Scout meeting, choir concert or science fair. This got me thinking:

Who speaks for the minivan? Who speaks for the Suburban full of kids? Who speaks for the Urban family?

Well I hope to. And not just about Saint Paul removing 70 miles of street lanes over the past 20 years but about the Urban family. Married 20 years, five kids, active in my Church, the kids schools, sports, scouts and other activities I hope to provide this prospective.

I love living in this City and hope to provide some reasons why. 

Onward!