These Look Familiar
When you walk around a place you start to notice things. For example, when I walk around my city I’ve picked up on the way one or more people are putting up screen prints on yellow plastic. For instance, this fox was attached to the back of a street sign. It’s a fitting little work of art, because foxes find their ways around this part of the city I call home.
I’ve posted photos before of the boxes of sand and salt which the city provides to people needing a bit more traction, and one of them included this picture of John “Gomez Addams” Astin.
But I’ve seen these artworks on yellow plastic canvases most of all placed in frames of something unusual. Something that was once everywhere, but now you’re surprised to see. The shells that once held payphones, anachronisms in the era of cell phones.
Once I saw this old payphone shell decorated for Christmas. You can see a sticker the artist probably added which says:
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL
SCREEN PRINTER
But this old shell has had the most prints put in it.
Now, it’s easy to imagine some pinched and sour busybody seeing the cracking shell of an empty payphone and then running to some online forum to moan and groan about the decline of civilization. A whiny person from Nextdoor or a local Subreddit who can’t imagine doing anything but getting a cheap dopamine hit by launching into a rant that leads to pompous declarations about urban decline and those people.
Or, you could be someone who decides to actually light a candle in the darkness and offer something like this.
Or this.
Or this.
There’s always the option. Complain and moan and surrender yourself to the worst expressions of nastiness and spite, or do something to lift the spirits of someone here and there.
These prints are just kind of left there, secured by a bit of tape, which suggests that anyone who wants them can have them. Whoever does this is putting a little bit of art and fun out into the world, with no expectation of reward or recognition. It’s there for the taking. You have to tip your hat to her or him or them.
So as you move through this world, maybe your contribution is just a simple smile as you walk by. Maybe you catch yourself about to contribute a rant about the homeless or refugees, and you ask yourself “Is this really necessary?” and take a step back. Is it really so hard to just not be a jerk?
There’s a choice to be made. Take the side of the person who leaves anonymous art for the enjoyment of people passing by, or join with the mob. When you think about it, it’s not hard to take the side of the artists, whoever they may be.
Those are outstanding.
…I once spent an afternoon trying in vain to see if anyone could offer so much as a vague clue to the identity of whoever it was that had left a little envelope containing (iirc) $1 along with a “citation” that did a fine job of walking a line between sounding like the sort of language you’d get on a notice of a fine but reverse-engineered to explain that they’d been selected for an anti-fine for being awesome
…must have taken someone a while to gin up that text…& I don’t know how many they doled out but I couldn’t find anyone else (or see any others on windscreens of other cars) in a 3-4 block grid I wandered around for an hour or two after drawing the short straw for attempting to satisfy the recipients’ curiosity who seemed to have got one
…so I was also impressed they managed to pick a hire car being driven by one of the hands-down most awesome people I know
…sometimes meaningless gestures are the best?
My city walk this morning, from the bus to the school was this–
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DBjEYeWM5Az7rZag9
Kiiiiinda nice, even if it *was* close to a mile, because it helped me re-set before the kids arrived for school.
And the wooly bear was almost stepped on, by the door–so I brought it out by the playground trees (and we looked it up, to see what they turn into!😉)
…wait…that’s your city?
…you wouldn’t be…uhh…never mind
…still & all…the very young do not always do as they are told…does sound like something you might say?
No, Sorry Rip, I am not Richard Dean Anderson, *or* MacGyver!
I’m a girl, not a boy.
But I do indeed live in Minneapolis!😁😉
And we really do have an incredible amount of nature built *directly* into our infrastructure around here🤗
If you look reeeeeally closely, at that line where the leaves merge with the sky? Those little lights are vehicle headlights😉
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LXoxij5dY5TEuftT7
It’s a whole-assed freeway bridge–three lanes plus a shoulder in both directions–the river it crosses is tge Mississippi, in the first-ring ‘burbs north of Minneapolis. I caught the closest bus to the preschool–but it still only gets me about a mile and a half (2.4-ish Km apparently?) from the school.
The quickest way to get to the school from the nearest bus stop, is to walk down the neighborhood street, to the park on one side of the river (for some reason, we have a LOT of parks & trails that run right along/under the bridge crossings on either side of the river–maybe because when the areas were bought out, they purchased a lot of land?🤷♀️)… anywho…
I walk down to the park on the east side of the river, take the then take the trail to the pedestrian part of the freeway bridge, walk *over* the river (as y’all can see, that’s a pretty view, too!😁), and then catch the trail on the *other* side of the bridge, back up to the sidewalk, and then walk the couple blocks to the ECSE building.
Most days, if i can, I catch a ride with a co-worker, from a different bus stop, rather than walking, but she’s been out so far this week, so I’ve been walking it instead.
And ngl–especially this week?
That walk through the little bit of woods, juuuuuust as the sun is coming up and making the day bright?
It’s been helping me *so* much, to stay sane, with *everything* happening in the world right now! There isn’t enough time to realllllly relax and stroll–i have to walk with some actual purpose. But it’s quiet enough, with no one else except the whitetail deer, birds, and me–along with alllll the little creeks that’re coming down to meet the river–that it *feels* much more “wild” than it truly is😉😁
I’ll info-dump on ya in a while, about *why* and how we got so much really great “nature” up here–some political, other *incredibly* planned!💖
But *that* is absolutely one of the things I *adore* about living in Minneapolis–i have three lakes within a mile of my apartment–and because folks a hundred or so years ago had foresight?
There are walking paths, parks, & trails encircling all three💖
And we obviously have the Mississippi. B’dote–the convergence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota rivers is just *south* of “Minneapolis Proper,” out at Fort Snelling…
And if you live in Minneapolis, for nearly every residence, there is a “walkable” park nearby…
With the term “walkable” meaning, you can find it by walking six blocks or less😁
It’s that combo of *feeling* rural, yet *living* in the city, that’s why I SO love Minneapolis.
Because, as I discovered 25 years ago, when I first moved here?
It is *literally* incredibly similar to the rural part of MN that i grew up in–Oak Savannas, rolling glacial hills, creeks rivers, *and* that chain of three lakes–all connected to one another, *and* walkable from my house…
Except it’s *bigger,* with better food available restaurant-wise, SO much more art & fun stuff to see, and more folks from all over the world😉
It *feels* like home–just “bigger”💖💝💗
And as y’all can see?
It’s PRETTY here, whenever the seasons change🥰😁🤗
…I appreciate all that…most of which I didn’t know…but…I did know about the not-a-guy bit…& I didn’t mean to imply anything richard dean anderson-y…more…you wouldn’t be holding out on us about secretly being from a super advanced alien race of space hippies who can make cities disappear into forest landscapes…possibly known to some macgyvers as “the nox”?
…you can tell us…we won’t let on…your secret is safe with us
Nice path there. It must be a treat most seasons.
I’ve seen it for a couple years, if i was stuck in traffic, going over the freeway/river bridge, but until the brakes went on the van (still need fixing, there’ve been a lot of bills to catch up on🙃🫠), and i started riding the bus, I never actually took the time to walk thelrough there (even though i always *wanted* to!😉)
But since that’s the closest moring bus stop?
I decided to try the walk–the first time i trekked across the bridge was honestly just because I accidentally missed my bus that morning, basically had a panic attack, then decided “fuck it!” called my boss to let her know I’d be a bit late–then I waited the hour for the *next* express to that ‘burb (it goes from downtown out to two Technial/Community Colleges, every hour or so, most of the day), and figured out how to get to that riverside park whose walking trail gets to the pedestrian part of the freeway/river bridge.
And since the co-worker i usually catch a ide across the river with has been out the last couple days, I just decided to walk it–because it IS so pretty back in there, this time of year😉
i have my doubts about the simpsons one….. but i think everything else is one person
im getting a style there