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Art by committee.

I’m about to put the Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­ial back in my attic-brain, but before I do, I want to con­sider mon­u­ments and memo­ri­als a bit longer. What hap­pened to the wall in its early years — the addi­tion of the two sculp­ture pieces and the flags — is prob­a­bly noth­ing new in the grand scheme of com­mis­sioned art, but it might have been the open­ing shots in the Great Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Wars of the lat­ter years of the century.

When the mon­u­ment to Franklin D. Roo­sevelt was in its design stages, the wheel­chair ques­tion was bat­ted around vig­or­ously. Wikipedia pro­vides a sketch that seems in accord with my mem­ory of the time:

The statue of FDR also stirred con­tro­versy over the issue of his dis­abil­ity. Design­ers decided against plans to have FDR shown in a wheel­chair. Instead, the statue depicts the pres­i­dent in a chair with a cloak obscur­ing the chair, show­ing him as he appeared to the pub­lic dur­ing his life. Roosevelt’s reliance on a wheel­chair was not pub­li­cized dur­ing his life, as there was a stigma of weak­ness and insta­bil­ity asso­ci­ated with any dis­abil­ity. How­ever, many wanted his dis­abil­ity to be shown to tell the story of what they believed to be the source of his strength. Other dis­abil­ity advo­cates, while not nec­es­sar­ily against show­ing him in a wheel­chair, were wary of protests about the memo­r­ial that leaned toward mak­ing Roo­sevelt a hero because of his dis­abil­ity.
The sculp­tor added cast­ers to the back of the chair in def­er­ence to advo­cates, mak­ing it a sym­bolic “wheel­chair”. The cast­ers are only vis­i­ble behind the statue.

I’m try­ing to imag­ine being the artist sad­dled with this alba­tross of a com­mis­sion, the weekly calls from the com­mit­tee. Cast­ers? My office chair has cast­ers. So does yours, most likely. I guess that makes it a sym­bolic wheel­chair, but (smacks fore­head). It reminds me of a story I did once upon a time, about an artist in Fort Wayne. The guy worked as a school cus­to­dian on the grave­yard shift and spent his days paint­ing. He favored large can­vases and pho­to­re­al­is­tic scenes, and worked slowly on his cre­ations; it took him months to com­plete one. He also liked to paint in pub­lic places, and that, cou­pled with his easy­go­ing, genial, not par­tic­u­larly artis­tic nature, made him a wel­come guest in most of them. At the time I wrote about him, he was work­ing in the library, but he had also done a stretch in the lobby of a local company.

If I’m remem­ber­ing this cor­rectly, that piece, the one done in the lobby, was of a night scene — the lobby at night, in fact. It was a com­mis­sion from the company’s art acqui­si­tion com­mit­tee, and in the months it took to com­plete, pro­vided enter­tain­ment to the work­ers as they passed through. Late in its exe­cu­tion, he added a fig­ure to the can­vas — a jan­i­tor vac­u­um­ing the car­pet. Sud­denly, every­one was an art critic, but par­tic­u­larly the art com­mit­tee. They began mak­ing sub­tle sug­ges­tions; are you sure you want that guy there? Does he have to be a jan­i­tor? Would you con­sider another sort of worker? The pres­sure built until some­one floated the idea that the com­mis­sion might be at risk if he insisted on keep­ing a jan­i­tor in this oth­er­wise lovely scene of their lobby. The guy shrugged and said OK, I’ll just return your deposit and clear out, then. The com­mit­tee backed down. Which goes to show you a lot of things, the main one being: Art by com­mit­tee isn’t really art at all.

Get­ting back to the Viet­nam memo­r­ial, I was struck then and am still struck by the stri­dency with which these groups push their agenda — the three-soldiers addi­tion to the com­plex was care­fully crafted for eth­nic diver­sity, but didn’t sat­isfy the women who served, so they got their own sculp­ture, and…feh.

The Viet­nam memo­r­ial has to have been an influ­ence in the makeshift-memorial trend of recent years. The num­ber of sol­diers who came to leave dog­tags, boots, pho­tos and other memen­tos at the wall has to be a mov­ing force behind the peo­ple who go to fatal-accident sites to leave flow­ers and ted­dy­bears. Or maybe there are huge gaps in my cultural-knowledge base, but my par­ents had a friend who was killed in a car crash, and they did their mourn­ing at the cemetery.

OK, a lit­tle bloggage:

Jon Stew­art — or his staff, any­way — earn their money yet again. Actu­ally, they all deserve a raise for, well, click through and see.

Via Jeff TMMO, a fine Tim­o­thy Egan rant in the NYT, won­der­ing if it’s time to put up the bar­ri­cades. Well, actu­ally that’s my reac­tion, but he’s dead-on.

Good gravy, this woman is a bleep­ing moron. Larry King finally grows a pair, and dri­ves Jesus Bar­bie away.

And now, work begins. For me, any­way. You folks, keep surf­ing the internet.

Posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
in Current events.

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89 responses to
“Art by committee.”

  1. mark said on November 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    I think you inad­ver­tently chan­nelled your inner Howard Roark. Maybe the integrity of your custodian/artist acquain­tance inspired you. I enjoyed his story.

  2. Peter said on November 12th, 2009 at 11:53 am

    Wow, I don’t know who’s the real idiot — Larry, Car­rie, Sarah, or me for watch­ing that video­tape. Pag­ing Bob Greene — there’s a gold­mine of vapid columns for you…maybe the first one is how Car­rie should guest dot script Ohio…

    As for the memo­r­ial being a mov­ing force — it sure has when it comes to the makeshift memo­ri­als, some of which are quite mov­ing, but as for the road­side memo­ri­als, I think that inspi­ra­tion has come from many places. I know in East­ern Europe peo­ple put crosses up on the road­side where there have been fatal crashes, both as a memo­r­ial and a warning…

  3. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Re Jon Stew­art: Han­nity acknowl­edged and apol­o­gized, which I never expected. Classy and appro­pri­ate, I thought.
    http://​www​.swamp​pol​i​tics​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​h​a​n​n​i​t​y​_​o​n​_​t​e​a​_​p​a​r​t​y​_​w​e​_​s​c​r​e​w​e.html

  4. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    Well, that clip from Larry King is the ulti­mate “not ready for prime time” per­for­mance. Princess Jesus Boo­bies comes off look­ing like a spoiled snot and King sounds incred­i­bly old and pathetic with his half-assed apologies.

    Perez Hilton was the best thing that ever hap­pened to the beau­ti­ful bigot. She’ll have a nice lit­tle career on the rub­ber chicken cir­cuit of anti-gay, pro-life, Chris­t­ian, tea par­ty­ing groups from coast-to-coast, where her vapid com­men­tary will be given great weight.

    It beats working.

  5. ROgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Good Lord, she’s dumb.

  6. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Nancy’s story reminded me of some­thing I couldn’t ver­ify with an inter­net search. Wasn’t there a famous artist who ran into some­thing sim­i­lar as a stu­dent (or maybe he was just start­ing out)? I thought it was Whistler. He painted a land­scape and included a cou­ple of fig­ures, and there was an objec­tion. So he took out the fig­ures and added a cou­ple of grave­stones. I seem to remem­ber that it was three things he was sup­posed to do, but I only remem­ber the fig­ures and the grave­stones. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

  7. John said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    West Point Trivia:
    James Abbot McNeill Whistler, the future painter, got booted in 1854 for being too impu­dent in engi­neer­ing draw­ing class. Assigned to draw a bridge, he insisted on draw­ing three boys fish­ing from the side of it; when ordered to erase them, he then drew three lit­tle head­stones by the river bank. (Inter­est­ingly, while every­one has heard of the paint­ing “Whistler’s Mother,” few know that Whistler’s father was a dis­tin­guished USMA grad­u­ate who was com­mis­sioned by a Russ­ian czar to build the first rail­road from Moscow to St. Petersburg.)

  8. nancy said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    The thing that made the artist’s story so galling was that HE was a jan­i­tor at his other job, and the art com­mit­tee was so tone-deaf about ask­ing him to paint the jan­i­tor out of the pic­ture. He really was imper­vi­ous to any sort of eco­nomic pres­sure, though — I used to see him ped­al­ing his bike around town, tow­ing his art sup­plies in a trailer, in even the cold­est weather.

  9. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    Sue: The only thing I remem­ber with Whistler was his pic­ture of fire­works, and Ruskin? get­ting his knick­ers in a twist. “He’s flung a pot of paint in the public’s face” or some­thing.
    Then there’s Dick­ens, get­ting mad at one of the Pre Raphaelites because they painted Mary as a poor old woman around the time of the cru­ci­fix­ion. I thought that was the idea.
    I really think I could do tele­vi­sion, at least with a hair trans­plant. And espe­cially if some­one spon­sored a set of tits.

  10. nancy said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Inter­est­ingly, while every one has heard of the paint­ing “Whistler’s Mother,” few know that Whistler’s father was a dis­tin­guished USMA grad­u­ate who was com­mis­sioned by a Russ­ian czar to build the first rail­road from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

    Not in Fort Wayne, how­ever. Maj. John Whistler was sta­tioned for a time at the orig­i­nal mil­i­tary post, and is rou­tinely part of the re-enacting cast there.

  11. mark said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    sue–

    Not what you were ref­er­enc­ing, but the Rockefeller/Diego-Rivera mural dis­pute is pretty famous and inter­est­ing. http://​www​.diego​-rivera​.org/​r​o​c​k​e​f​e​l​l​e​r​c​o​n​t​r​o​v​e​r​s​y.html

    Integrity all around, if you ask me. Rivera refused to change the mural. Rock­e­feller destroyed it, but after he paid the bill. Rivera used Rockefeller’s money to pro­duce some­thing similar.

  12. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    Any­one could do tele­vi­sion bet­ter than Car­rie Pre­jean. What is so strik­ing is how lit­tle she seemed to learn from her pageant days. I thought con­tes­tants were sup­posed to be able to han­dle a sim­ple inter­view and would be able to slip ques­tions they did not want to answer.

    One of my pub­lic speak­ing stu­dents was a vet­eran of the teen pageants in Texas and she was one of the smoothest speak­ers I’ve ever taught. If she lost her place in a speech –which I could tell by fol­low­ing an out­line– no one else ever knew it. She had per­fect pre­sen­ta­tion skills.

    Princess Jesus Boo­bies was per­form­ing at a far higher level in the pageant indus­try, but she appar­ently did not pick up much from the expe­ri­ence, aside from her new chest, of course.

    The funny thing is, I’m will­ing to bet this clip will be part of her press kit, under­scor­ing how hard it is for a good Chris­t­ian woman to be heard in a world of nasty, sec­u­lar human­is­tic TV hosts with ugly suspenders.

  13. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    Thanks guys! Speak­ing of art, here’s some Christ­mas house art you may have already seen; it’s been mak­ing the email rounds lately. I’m guess­ing these neigh­bors are either best friends or sworn ene­mies, no in-between.
    http://​www​.soda​head​.com/​o​t​h​e​r​/​t​h​e​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​m​a​s​-​l​i​g​h​t​s​-​d​i​t​t​o​-​h​o​u​s​e​/​b​l​o​g​-​1​80087/

  14. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    [whis­tle] Call­ing a penalty box vio­la­tion on Car­rie Pre­jean, 15 min­utes in the lane vio­la­tion; tech­ni­cal foul … yer outta here, ma’am. G’bye.

    IMHO, Egan (NYT essay) is call­ing for a New Bull Moose Party — huzzah!

  15. jcburns said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Not sure I can put the words “classy” and “Han­nity” together, espe­cially after lis­ten­ing to his whiny “okay, okay, you got us, this once” tone. (Or does he sound like that the whole show? I never watch.)

    But yes, I agree, the pos­si­bil­ity of dis­course con­tin­ues when at least there’s some sort of acknowl­edge­ment of what folks are say­ing to and about each other.

    And Nance, yeah, we saw a very large num­ber of road­side mon­u­ments, and, stranger, lots of the back-glass-of-a-pickup-truck “In mem­ory of” ded­i­ca­tions on our big ol road trip. What, “I’m so sad about a loved one’s death that I’ll ded­i­cate, uh, let’s see, this piece of auto glass to their memory?”

    [edit] And oh, by the way, can we retire the word ‘makeshift’? It’s really becom­ing one of those usages where peo­ple say it because they’ve heard it, not because they under­stand it. [/]

  16. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    A Teddy Roo­sevelt would be most wel­come today.

    By the way, how can some­one who describes them­selves as mild-mannered riff off the lyrics of “I Want to Be Sedated” so quickly? Do you secretly wear a Mohawk, Jeff?

  17. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    It’s the Ramones, dude. How can some­one claim to be cul­tur­ally lit­er­ate and not know their oeuvre?

    [insert wink­ing emoti­con here]

    No Mohawk. But i don’t wear a high and tight any­more, either.

  18. ROgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Cooz, that Whistler paint­ing is in the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel, and I think he was rewarded a few cents.
    http://​www​.dia​.org/​t​h​e​_​c​o​l​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​/​o​v​e​r​v​i​e​w​/​f​u​l​l​.​a​s​p​?​o​b​j​e​c​t​I​D​=​6​4​9​3​1​&​a​m​p​;​i​mage=1

    Mark, Edsel Ford com­mis­sioned Diego Rivera to paint a set of murals for the DIA in the 1930’s. To this day, the Rivera Court is a remark­able set of images that the museum and the com­mu­nity are justly proud of.
    http://​www​.dia​.org/​t​h​e​_​c​o​l​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​/​o​v​e​r​v​i​e​w​/​f​u​l​l​.​a​s​p​?​o​b​j​e​c​t​I​D​=​5​8​5​3​8​&​a​m​p​;​i​mage=1

  19. nancy said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

    Wasn’t there a dustup over some Thomas Hart Ben­ton paint­ings in…(spinning hard drive)…the Mis­souri state capi­tol? One scene showed a lynch­ing? Upset the leg­is­la­ture? They came this­close to paint­ing over them, or maybe they did?

    There’s a T.H.B. mural at I.U., too. And I believe a throw­away sketch he did is in the erotic art col­lec­tion at the Kin­sey Institute.

    Oh, and j.c., I think I recall read­ing some­where that road­side and auto-glass memo­ri­als are a Latino thing, so it would fig­ure you’d see a lot of them in the south­west. Ask the res­i­dent archaeologist.

  20. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    Jeff Bor­den, can I change your sen­tence to:
    ’A Teddy Roo­sevelt [who doesn’t say things like “I should wel­come almost any war, for I think this coun­try needs one”] would be most wel­come today’? Love the man, but he had way too much fun play­ing in the mil­i­tary sandbox.

  21. jcburns said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    Well, yeah, we con­cluded that, but we were see­ing even more of them in Very White places, i.e. Idaho. And here in the south. I think it’s some­how crossed over into the generic Chris­t­ian culture.

  22. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Jeff TMMO,

    I always wear a suit and tie when I teach. I’m bald and my beard is now almost totally gray. In short, I look like Methuse­lah to the stu­dents. So, I’m pack­ing up my stuff after class and stu­dents from the next class are strolling in includ­ing a woman with pink and green hair, many facial pierc­ings and two iPod buds squeezed into her ear. I ask her what she is lis­ten­ing to and she responds, “You wouldn’t know them.” I press on. She says, “The Mor­locks.” So I started quot­ing the lyrics to their song “Get Outta My Life,” which is on my iPod shuf­fle. She seems shocked. I remind her it’s not always a good idea to judge a book by its cover.

    So, we’re set to trade some itunes stuff next week. And this is why I love teach­ing at Loyola.

  23. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    I read some­thing about a Ben­ton paint­ing of a lynch­ing the other day. He and Grant Wood were appar­ently close friends, or drink­ing bud­dies. They both did some work with the WPA. At least as lecturers.

  24. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Sue,

    I was think­ing more of the trust-busting, outdoors-loving TR, not the war­rior TR. Your point is taken. He did play that machismo stuff pretty hard. Guess he never got San Juan Hill out of his bloodstream.

  25. moe99 said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    I love the Whistler Pea­cock Room at the Freer Gallery in D.C.:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​zxuq72

    Ruskin was an unques­tioned arbiter of taste dur­ing his day, as evi­denced by my great grand­mother, who copied his pref­ace to the Boston Cook­ing School cook­book (by Fan­nie Farmer) and gave it to her 3 daugh­ters, all of whom had it framed and hang­ing in their kitchens. I have my grandmother’s copy. My great grand­mother, good Chris­t­ian that she was, took out the ref­er­ences to the clas­si­cal fig­ures, but the orig­i­nal reads:

    “Cook­ery means the knowl­edge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowl­edge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is heal­ing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means care­ful­ness and inven­tive­ness and will­ing­ness and readi­ness of appli­ances. It means the econ­omy of your grand­moth­ers and the sci­ence of the mod­ern chemist; it means much test­ing and no wast­ing; it means Eng­lish thor­ough­ness and French art in Ara­bian hos­pi­tal­ity; and, in fine, it means that you are to be per­fectly and always ladies — loaf givers.” John Ruskin

  26. nancy said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    That room was orig­i­nally in Freer’s house in Detroit. He used to have peo­ple over for art-appreciation par­ties. Every­one would gather in the draw­ing room and a but­ler would bring in a can­vas and set it up on an easel. All would look upon it, appre­ci­at­ing it, and after a while the but­ler would take it away.

  27. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    Moe: Was Jo Hef­fer­nan the model for the paint­ing in that room?

  28. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Nancy: Imag­ine the thrills they’d have got­ten from a GAF Viewmaster.

  29. Connie said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    Bar­bara Kingsolver’s newly released book The Lacuna has a large seg­ment set in Diego Rivera’s Mex­i­can house­hold dur­ing the Leo Trotsy days. Our main char­ac­ter starts his work life as plas­ter mixer for Rivera’s murals, and ends up his cook and sec­re­tary. It send me to Wikipedia to read more about Trotsky’s last days in particular.

  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    JeffB — are you in the Lewis Tower across from the Water Tower? (Is that the name of that bldg?)

    I will admit to being hob­bled in my appre­ci­a­tion of TR by the por­trayal, once deliv­ered by yrs truly, in “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

    “Bully! Now, time to dig another lock for the Panama Canal …”

  31. Julie Robinson said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Con­fes­sion time: #1 I always thought the Thomas Hart Ben­son murals in the IU Audi­to­rium were…ugly. #2 I have heard of the Ramones but don’t know any of their music. I grew up on a steady diet of clas­si­cal and show tune music. I promise to use my son’s Nap­ster account and explore their music as soon as I fin­ish my bleepin’ ser­mon, which I will now resume writing.

  32. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    Julie, you’re clearly ready for some Ramones.

  33. moe99 said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    C’dad: Jo Hif­fer­nan was a red haired beauty. That model appears to have brown hair. There’s a Whistler por­trait of Hif­fer­nan in this article:

    http://​sharpin​sandiego​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​7​/​1​3​/​s​c​a​n​d​a​l​o​u​s​-​l​adies/

  34. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    Oh my! Why didn’t any­one tell me they’ve made Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox into a movie? And appar­ently a good one too, true to Roald? Yay!
    http://​salon​.com/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​/​f​a​n​t​a​s​t​i​c​_​m​r​_​f​o​x​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​t​m​l​?​s​t​o​r​y​=​/​e​n​t​/​m​o​v​i​e​s​/​r​e​v​i​e​w​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​1​1​/​f​a​n​t​a​s​t​i​c​_​mr_fox

  35. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Jeff TMMO,

    This semes­ter I’m teach­ing at the Infor­ma­tion Com­mons on the Lake Shore Cam­pus, which is less than two years old and a splen­did piece of archi­tec­ture. The east and west walls are entirely glass with Lake Michi­gan just yards away.

    Last semes­ter, they gave me a work sta­tion in Lewis Tow­ers, but I taught at 25 E. Pear­son, which is maybe 10 or 15 years old. They do hold classes in Lewis, but increas­ingly, they are relo­cat­ing them to the newer structures.

  36. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    Our pres­i­dent signed a new unem­ploy­ment exten­sion. And I have an inter­view next week. I don’t believe in God, but thank God!

  37. Dexter said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

    Jesus, I’ll be pon­der­ing this the rest of the day: Why did I leave almost all my war memen­tos at The Wall but never would con­sider leav­ing flow­ers or stuff at a fatal crash site?
    I will admit here what I never have men­tioned to any­one. My grand­kids some­times asked me some­thing about the war and I wished I had kept that stuff to show them.
    Leav­ing those lit­tle memen­tos at The Wall was not my idea, of course. All the news­pa­pers were run­ning sto­ries on how the vets were unload­ing their stuff there and it was going into a big ware­house in D.C. for cat­a­loging. I thought that was a good idea. Guess what? It was a stu­pid fuck­ing idea. Don’t mean nuthin’.
    There now! I feel better!

  38. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    And thank you all for the phrase, “Jesus Boo­bies”. I will remem­ber that until the day that I die. In a good way.

  39. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    Cooz, I’m not sure what you look like, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to see you with a hair trans­plant and tits.

  40. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    I don’t recall where I read Princess Jesus Boo­bies the first time. Maybe Tbogg? I didn’t coin the term, though I wish I had.

  41. Dexter said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Jeff­Bor­den: I laughed out loud all by myself at that clip of “Jesus Boo­bies”.
    That was bet­ter than the lit­tle South Car­olina girl pon­tif­i­cat­ing about “the Iraq”.

  42. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    Dex -

    Your stuff is in a box in D.C. They col­lect it, they don’t throw it away.

    Geez, can you tell that I’m happy?

  43. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    It’s right next to the Ark of the Covenant, Dex­ter! So you’ve got *that* goin’ for ya …

  44. ROgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Thomas Hart Ben­ton doesn’t do much for me: his folksy style veers into corn­pone ter­ri­tory. An inter­est­ing fac­toid about him, how­ever, is that he taught art in New York, and one of his stu­dents was Jack­son Pollock.

  45. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    crinoid­girl: The hair trans­plant is optional, but I’m afraid the moobs are standard.

  46. LAMary said on November 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    If you’re out there Danny, let me know if you want tick­ets to How The Grinch Stole Christ­mas at the Old Globe. My friend is play­ing Max the Dog and he can get me tickets.

  47. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Oh, Cooz. I was afraid of that. Man boobs.

  48. moe99 said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Fin­gers crossed for you, crinoidgirl…

  49. Rana said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    For the TR fans out there: http://​www​.harkav​a​grant​.com/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​id=224

    (I’ve always liked the man, and the pres­i­dent — my work’s in envi­ron­men­tal his­tory and the Amer­i­can West, so I pretty much have to — but have to bal­ance that like with the aware­ness of his racist machismo side — very much a com­plex man, Mr. Roosevelt.)

  50. Deborah said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    Design­ing for a com­mit­tee — wel­come to my world. That’s what I do every work­day and now on nights and week­ends too. What fun you can’t imag­ine. I have one client that sits at the con­fer­ence table where I’m pre­sent­ing like a dis­mal cloud of woe, just wait­ing to call out some detail that she must pon­tif­i­cate on and change insignif­i­cantly to her lik­ing. Some­one please tell me why I am still in this business?

  51. brian stouder said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    Some­one please tell me why I am still in this business?

    Chuck Bar­ris mode ON: “Because I LOVE IT! ‘Course, I like rope-burn.” Chuck Bar­ris mode OFF.

    And now, work begins. For me, any­way. You folks, keep surf­ing the internet.

    What are you try­ing to say, huh?

  52. Vince said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    For a look at how Maya Lin man­aged to achieve what she did in spite of enor­mous pub­lic pres­sures (as a col­lege stu­dent no less) I highly rec­om­mend this doc­u­men­tary: Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.

    It won the Acad­emy Award in 1995.

  53. mark said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Gen­eral Motors now answers to gov­ern­ment, rather than to share­hold­ers, and sat­is­fy­ing 535 new bosses is an impos­si­b­lity, but mak­ing mak­ing the effort is the umbil­i­cal cord to the trea­sury. http://​online​.wsj​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​S​B​1​2​5​6​7​7​5​5​2​0​0​1​4​1​4​6​9​9.html

    It is, in effect, design by com­mit­tee, with many of the com­mitte mem­bers hav­ing no inter­est in cars. Make them: green, elec­tric, hybrid, safe, small, union-manufactured, high domes­tic con­tent, family-friendly, inex­pen­sive, styl­ish, durable, sporty, fun, pop­u­lar, distraction-free, drunk-proof and prof­itable. The prod­ucts and the busi­ness will fail but the enter­prise will con­tinue so long as Con­gress can use it to fun­nel a lit­tle some­thing to the folks back home.

    And on Major Hasan, it seems like the time for “with­hold­ing judg­ment” is near­ing an end. http://​abc​news​.go​.com/​B​l​o​t​t​e​r​/​h​a​s​a​n​-​m​u​l​t​i​p​l​e​-​m​a​i​l​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​s​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​a​l​s​/​s​t​o​r​y​?​i​d​=​9​065692

    The busi­ness card is a classy touch that might catch on with degreed jihadists every­where. If the tragedy was not so great I could almost appre­ci­ate the absurd humor in this craziness.

  54. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    And I still will want a 1970 Fire­bird Trans Am with the 455-cubic-inch HD engine. White with blue detail­ing, please, and the famous Pon­tiac “bot­tle cap” mag wheels.

  55. Jason T. said on November 12th, 2009 at 3:59 pm

    Yes, Mark @ 53, because Gen­eral Motors’ cars were such roar­ing suc­cesses before the gov­ern­ment res­cued the company.

    If only we could get GM back to build­ing great cars like the Cadil­lac Cat­era and the Pon­tiac Aztek. Damn you, Nancy Pelosi, and your meddling!

    If you know any­thing about the giant GM bureau­cracy — at least before the bank­ruptcy — it’s clear that the entire com­pany has been run by com­mit­tee for decades, dat­ing at least to the 1960s. (See also, “On a Clear Day You Can See Gen­eral Motors.”)

    So what changed?

    Of course, if the fed­eral gov­ern­ment had let GM go toes-up, then we could com­plain about that: “It’s too bad B. Hus­sein Obama doesn’t care about Amer­i­can jobs,” and blah blah blah.

  56. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    Coo­zledad and Crinoid­girl:
    So in Cooz’s case, it wouldn’t be “Jesus boobs”, it would be “Jesus! Boobs!”.

  57. mark said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    jeff,

    In our old age, we will look back and count our­selves among the lucky few who lived dur­ing that brief period of time when 455 cubic inch engines shared the earth with man and lived in pas­sen­ger cars.

    And Jason T, you are right. Which is why it should have been allowed to die, with the few remain­ing parts of value har­vested and trans­planted else­where, rather than being kept alive by arti­fi­cial means.

  58. Jason T. said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    I’ll let the employ­ees of Irvin Works here in Pitts­burgh know.

    Rather than mak­ing coil steel for GM plants, they should have got­ten on with their lives’ work as Sub­way sand­wich artists!

    Sorry to be so sar­cas­tic, but the casual way we say, “Well, let’s throw away America’s remain­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing base!” leaves a lousy taste in my mouth.

    But I have been told before that I have an atti­tude problem.

  59. Dexter said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm

    Track Back #43: Jmmo: Wow…does this mean Har­ri­son Ford will some­day try on those old tire-soled black san­dals and kick through that other money and junk I left there? Oh wow, man!

    Maya Lin over­came the mighty VFW, too, whose lead­er­ship lob­bied hard to push her aside. I get their mag­a­zine. I remem­ber they were really hav­ing a fit. There prob­a­bly is a lot about this online but I can’t find any­thing right away. I mostly recall the angry let­ters from vets, who wanted more of an Iwo Jima type memo­r­ial. I won­der if those old coots are still pissed off.

  60. Jean S said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    on the road­side memo­r­ial thing, I think some­one did a book (pho­tographs) of the memo­ri­als in New Mex­ico awhile back..

  61. MichaelG said on November 12th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    Good luck, Crinoid Girl. We’re with you.

    My father used to be an instruc­tor at Loy­ola back in the 50’s. He taught most of his classes at Lewis Tow­ers. That would be the 1950s.

  62. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    Lewis is a nice old build­ing and its posi­tion over­look­ing Water Tower park pretty much ensures it’s going to stay there for a long time. Loy­ola keeps try­ing to mod­ern­ize it, here and there, so that the bath­rooms no longer look like some­thing out of the Roman col­i­seum, but the heat­ing and cool­ing issues of an older struc­ture like that are con­sid­er­able. You can walk from the frigid North Pole, past the steam­ing equa­tor, and down to the icy South Pole on one floor.

  63. LAMary said on November 12th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    When I was in col­lege in the 70s (that’s the 1970s) the for­eign stu­dents from Iran or Saudi Ara­bia had a thing for Fire­birds. If some­one started a con­ver­sa­tion with, “you know that Iran­ian guy in our phys­i­ol­ogy class..” the reply would be, “you mean the one who dri­ves a Fire­bird and has a mus­tache?” Black Fire­birds with the bird decal in gold on the hood.

  64. Julie Robinson said on November 12th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    Like Mary, I was in col­lege in the 70s and the Saudis who lived across from me ran their air con­di­tioner all win­ter. Never fig­ured that one out.

    Sermon’s done, 11 min­utes, alleluia.

  65. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    LAMary,

    I saw a fas­ci­nat­ing photo story within the past year on the Tehran Firebird/Camaro club. They looked just like Amer­i­can guys pos­ing with their cars except for the Ara­bic license plates. And, of course, they were all Per­sians with great hair and big mous­taches, just like you remember.

  66. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    Hell, fin­gers crossed for YOU, moe…

  67. Jolene said on November 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Chim­ing in late on a few things –

    I, too, was under­whelmed by Hannity’s apol­ogy. For an apol­ogy to count as an apol­ogy, the apol­o­gizer has to be, you know, sorry – not sorry to have been caught.

    Road­side memo­ri­als were com­mon on in AZ when I lived there in the late ‘80s. Seems like I par­tic­u­larly saw them while dri­ving through the Tohono O’Oham reser­va­tion. But they were not the excess of teddy bears and can­dles that one now sees at the scene of urban shoot­ings. White crosses and plas­tic flow­ers is what I remember.

    Jeff B: You are inhab­it­ing my old stomp­ing grounds. I worked as a research asso­ciate for a prof at the Lake Shore cam­pus of Loy­ola for two years while writ­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion at North­west­ern, lo these many years ago. Lived across Sheri­dan Road on Albion Avenue. Had a pretty nice apart­ment for a grad stu­dent. Croa­t­ian land­lords who’d fled the Balkans and did a nice job of tak­ing care of the place. Missed hear­ing what was on TV, though, when the El went by – at least if the win­dows were open.

    And, as to join­ing the pitch­fork brigades, I am get­ting close. For me, the first tar­get would be Con­gress. My mes­sage: Grow a spine! Pass health care leg­is­la­tion! Move on to cli­mate change, finan­cial reform, updat­ing the air traf­fic con­trol sys­tem, improv­ing our IT infra­struc­ture, and on and on. Deal with the facts; ignore the lob­by­ists. Stop wast­ing time and money. Do the right thing!

  68. Sue said on November 12th, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    http://​www​.den​ver​post​.com/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​e​d​/​c​i​_​1​3​767711?
    Buried in this arti­cle is a ref­er­ence to leg­is­la­tion Sen. Schultheis voted against, requir­ing preg­nant women to be tested for AIDS. If you know before­hand that a mother has AIDS, you can deliver the baby in such a way that it is not infected. He did not vote against it for pri­vacy rights or any­thing like that. He voted against it because, as he said, “What I’m hop­ing is that, yes, that per­son may have AIDS, have it seri­ously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The fam­ily will see the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of that promis­cu­ity and it may make a num­ber of peo­ple over the com­ing years begin to real­ize that there are neg­a­tive con­se­quences and maybe they should adjust their behav­ior.”
    Ok, we have an elected offi­cial who is wish­ing AIDS on babies. BABIES. Have we reached the bot­tom of the bar­rel yet?

  69. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    Sue @56 -

    My part­ner was just won­der­ing while I was laugh­ing at the cheese­burg­ers I’m cooking.

  70. moe99 said on November 12th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

    Sue, I bet Schultheis doesn’t want them aborted. He embod­ies per­ni­cious evil sim­i­lar to John Hus­ton in Chinatown.

  71. Jolene said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:01 pm

    Chris Matthews just played the Han­nity apol­ogy again. It wasn’t so bad, I guess. Not great, but not bad. I’m sure you were all dying to know what I thought on this press­ing topic.

    And, yes, Jesus boobs vs. Jesus! Boobs! Funny.

  72. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Jason @55 -

    I haven’t read that book in eons, and just ordered an inter­li­brary loan on it.

    For a book writ­ten 30 years ago, it’s amaz­ingly pop­u­lar — mul­ti­ple copies out and being trans­ferred between libraries (means other peo­ple have holds on it, too). Of course, this IS the Motor City, where you can shove dump trucks out the side of the old Packard plant… (where else can you do that!)

  73. brian stouder said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Sue, you scared me; I’d never heard of Sen­a­tor Schitheds, and was think­ing that I must have schit for brains. But upon learn­ing Schitheds is a state sen­a­tor, I heaved a sigh of relief. Still — what a moron.

    Julie —  I’d say “break a leg” or “knock ‘em dead” — but nei­ther seems to really fit; So — amen!

  74. Jim in Fl said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    The road­side memo­ri­als are also pop­u­lar here in Florida. But I never saw many auto glass memo­ri­als until after Dale Earnhart’s untimely demise. After his crash, just about every F150 down here had a memo­r­ial to Dale on it’s back win­dow. Now you see also see many memo­ri­als for fam­ily mem­bers or friends.

  75. Jeff Borden said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:08 pm

    Sue,

    This par­tic­u­lar creep in Col­orado rep­re­sents the super evan­gel­i­cal area around Col­orado Springs, but even given his con­stituency, his view­point is appalling. He was in the news this week for Tweet­ing about how Obama was fly­ing the Amer­i­can plane straight into the earth, end­ing with the two words, “Let’s roll.” Obvi­ously, this is straight out of United Flight 93, but he says in his mar­ginal apol­ogy he meant no offense.

    Paul Krug­man had a very scary col­umn about the GOP recently, sug­gest­ing the national party might soon be like the Repub­li­can Party in Cal­i­for­nia. Though minis­cule in num­ber, they have been capa­ble of grind­ing the Golden State into stag­na­tion. Krug­man says a national rump party, though unable to gather a major­ity of votes, could sim­ply throw itself into the cogs of gov­ern­ment machin­ery and keep us from get­ting any­thing done. Given the histri­on­ics of the far right –Sarah Bern­hardt would be embar­rassed by their over­act­ing– it’s a fairly rea­son­able scenario.

    I guess we’ll see soon enough in Florida. The gov­er­nor is an extra­or­di­nar­ily pop­u­lar mod­er­ate Repub­li­can who would crush the nom­i­nal Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee, but the mighty brains of the Tea Party Brigade have decided they would rather have the very far right Marco Rubio run­ning for the seat. If they can big­foot Char­lie Crist out of the race, there will be a national purge of any­one who is not to the right of Attilla the Hun. Can there be an entire national party of truly stu­pid peo­ple? Are Michelle Bach­mann, James Imhofe, David Vit­ter, Sarah Palin and Tom Tan­credo really the GOP?

    Lord help us all.

  76. coozledad said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    Sue: The moral the­ory of dis­ease. It was the under­pin­ning of the Tus­keegee syphilis exper­i­ments. It was Jesse Helms’ swan­song (AIDS was vis­ited on homo­sex­u­als by God).
    Any belief struc­ture that car­ries that medieval bag­gage is contemptible.

    crinoidgirl:I’m glad my tits are finally good for something.

  77. Jolene said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    Oh, and re the ser­mon. I’m sure you’ll do great, Julie. I’m no longer a church­goer and never really was much of a believer, but, once upon a time, I belonged to a very lib­eral, polit­i­cally active con­gre­ga­tion in Evanston, IL, and I was one of the laypeo­ple who ser­mo­nized while the min­is­ter was on vacation.

    Took me many hours to put the ser­mon together, but I look back on it as one of my best pieces of writ­ing. Per­haps not sur­pris­ing given the weak­ness of my the­o­log­i­cal stance, it was about doubt and what to do in the face of uncer­tainty re what it is we’re sup­posed to be doing here – on earth, that is.

  78. Julie Robinson said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    Isn’t that what most ser­mons are really about, Jolene? The Bible lessons were about liv­ing in times of hard­ship and how, when we care for each other, we become shin­ing stars of encour­age­ment. It was per­fect for a day cel­e­brat­ing all the min­istries our women are engaged in, and once I got rolling I had to do some seri­ous cut­ting to avoid lis­tener fatigue. It’s been a good exer­cise in faith, prayer and Bible study; I’m never going to sit down and read Daniel on my own otherwise.

  79. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Jolene @67 -

    What the hell is wrong with you! You’re talk­ing sense!

  80. Jolene said on November 12th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    Isn’t that what most ser mons are really about, Jolene?

    I’m sure you’re right, Julie. There are so many rea­sons to be doubt­ful, depressed, and dis­cour­aged. Peo­ple need all the stok­ing they can get.

    On another topic: There are two new shows on CNBC this evening that might be inter­est­ing. A Q@A ses­sion w/ War­ren Buf­fett and Bill Gates and bio of Gates – assum­ing you’re inter­ested in the views and expe­ri­ence of super-rich tycoons/philanthropists, that is.

    On still another topic: Are any of you Google Chrome users? I just started play­ing w/ it a cou­ple of days ago (after hav­ing spent a ridicu­lous amount of time con­fig­ur­ing Fire­fox w/ just the right mix of add-ons), and I very cool. It is, as far as I can see, less con­fig­urable than Fire­fox, but it really fast, and I love the sta­tus bar search.

    Talk­ing sense, crinoid­girl? I’ll try to keep it to a min­i­mum. Am glad to hear you’ll be eli­gi­ble for the extended unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits. I thought of you and won­dered when I heard the news, as I thought I thought I heard some­one on the teevee say that peo­ple whose ben­e­fits had expired wouldn’t be covered.

  81. LAMary said on November 12th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    I’ll say it again. Col­orado Springs used to be a nice city. The megachurches com­pletely fucked it up.

  82. alex said on November 12th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    Wow, so much to chew on here.

    First I saw of road­side memo­ri­als was in New Mex­ico on the road between Santa Fe and Taos. Stopped to take a pic­ture of a most spec­tac­u­lar one on a curve over­look­ing a sheer cliff. Also noted that their news­pa­pers run anniver­sary obits (now there’s an idea for our cash-strapped mid­west­ern dailies). When I moved back to Hoosier­tucky I was astounded to see cru­ci­fixes fes­tooned with flow­ers and toys all over the damned coun­try­side. This was def­i­nitely not part of the land­scape when I left for Chicago as a polit­i­cal refugee in 1986.

    Never went into the Lake Tow­ers but used to work in the ‘hood at 750 N. LSD when it was leased by North­west­ern to the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion. Best office view I had in that place was in an eighth– or ninth-floor atrium over­look­ing the lake­front imme­di­ately to the north of Lake Pointe Tower, where peo­ple anchored yachts and par­tied all day while us work­ing stiffs worked. And some of them par­tied naked, much to the delight of all the office schlubs.

    I vaguely remem­ber some con­tro­versy over a WPA paint­ing in the IU Stu­dent Union that some peo­ple regarded as offen­sive and wanted removed. I thought it was located some­where near the south­west entrance of the Union at the end of East Kirk­wood. I don’t par­tic­u­larly remem­ber the paint­ing or what it depicted but I do remem­ber it strik­ing me as con­sid­er­ably less out­ra­geous than the tone of the protests.

  83. Dexter said on November 12th, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    track­back #74: Jim in FL, I never saw a “Car 3″ trib­ute on a Ford! How­ever, damn-near every Chevy pickup still has a #3 Dale E. decal some­where on it, usu­ally the back win­dow. I always resented NASCAR steal­ing the num­bers for them­selves.
    #3? That means Babe Ruth! #6? Mark Mar­tin you say? I say Al Kaline and Stan the Man Musial .
    And #24? I know…Jeff Gor­don to you, but to me, Willie Mays.

  84. nancy said on November 12th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

    The Firebird/Trans Am/Camaro was also the car of choice for Arab/Iranian guys at Ohio U. in the mid-‘70s. The deal­er­ship must have been the first stop after clear­ing pass­port control.

  85. crinoidgirl said on November 12th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    3D recon­struc­tion of Sully’s land­ing in the Hud­son (put it on full screen to get full effect):

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​j6l6gf

  86. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 12th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    I think you try to preach a vision that calls forth, that describes a new future that has just enough in com­mon with today’s real­ity to make sense to peo­ple now, and looks ahead just far enough to keep people’s heads up and mov­ing together.

    There’s a kind of chap­laincy that exhorts and shouts encour­age­ment to those that run out ahead of the pack and lead the charge, which i think is real and impor­tant, but i’m more of the nudg­ing sheep­dog that would rather get the whole flock mov­ing for­ward three steps than set­tle for get­ting three peo­ple up and over the next ridge­line a mile ahead.

  87. Dexter said on November 13th, 2009 at 2:58 am

    I loved the old Bicy­cling Mag­a­zine of the early 80s. Once they ran a poll regard­ing the worst, most dis­cour­te­ous dri­vers to cyclists. I remem­ber call­ing my older brother who was an ultra marathoner and Paris-Brest-Paris (he’s on this YouTube from 1:03 to 1:08, try­ing on sun­glasses)
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​6​T​y​w​L​n7oOLA
    rider. We instantly agreed: young males dri­ving Fire­birds and Camaros, and espe­cially Trans-Ams.
    I remem­ber the results. Over­whelm­ingly, the poll indi­cated we cyclists should always be aware of the cars I men­tioned, as they gave us lit­tle clear­ance and dis­played nearly zero desire to share the road. That style of car still is the most dan­ger­ous to us.
    Best, safest, most cour­te­ous dri­vers were, hands down, women in vans or cars with small chil­dren in the car with them. A few years later when mini­vans became so pop­u­lar I noticed that young moth­ers chauf­feur­ing babies around were likely to be the only dri­vers to give a full lane’s clear­ance when pass­ing on a road with lit­tle traf­fic. It’s still that way.
    The scari­est dri­vers for me are old peo­ple who can’t see any­more but still drive ( I was slighty brushed by a rear view mir­ror once on SR 66 com­ing out of Defi­ance) and teenagers who don’t seem to care. Sadly, we lost two old gents in sep­a­rate bike-car crashes in the past two months.
    I ride all year round, but of course the cold and ice cur­tail many rides in win­ter. It’s those months when I have the recur­ring dreams of cycling in Naples and Fort Myers and other Florida trails.

  88. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am

    Inter­est­ing par­al­lel — who pulls over and puts on their lights in fac­ing lanes when funeral pro­ces­sions go by. I “get” to sit in the lead coach quite often, with the funeral direc­tor dri­ving and the guest of honor in the back, and the fam­ily in a car/s right behind.

    Said mod­els of car can be counted on to do things like pass us on the right when we’re head­ing down a four-lane road get­ting ready to take the cortege through a left turn, or try to turn through us as we’re mov­ing through an inter­sec­tion, etc. Must note that young women in Miatas and lit­tle Fire­birds (? not sure i have model right), espe­cially red ones, are just as insen­si­tively impatient.

    Pick­ups with sin­gle males and minivans/suvs with moms and kids are almost guar­an­teed to pull over to the side and slow or stop even when on the other side of a median as fac­ing traf­fic. But we have to keep a sharp eye out for the Camaro bolt­ing out from behind them, swerv­ing towards our oncom­ing pro­ces­sion, and roar­ing past grimly look­ing straight ahead.

  89. Dave said on November 13th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    Post­ing late as I seem to do when I finally get to a com­puter to catch up, but there are road­side memo­ri­als all over south­east­ern Ari­zona, where my aunt and uncle have lived for many years.

    I think that the states of Idaho and pos­si­bly Mon­tana, too, erected crosses any­where along high­ways where a fatal acci­dent had occurred. This was done by the state high­way depart­ment. We were there on fam­ily vaca­tions in the mid 60’s (yes, the 1960’s, a la LAMary) and I remem­ber them being road­side. My father said when he was a small boy, they did that in Ohio but the state dis­con­tin­ued the practice.

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