February 15, 2007
Go for a walk
Flamingos decked out with Valentine's finery
My walking route carries me down 28th Street and past these flamingos. Most days a fluffy, friendly cat runs down the steps and demands to have her head rubbed. Most days I rub the kitty's head. Today was cold, so she must have been indoors. She's the most adorable cat; she's like a pocket version of Sparky, only friendlier.
I settled for shooting the flamingos. So pink, so saucy! The flamingos are part of a neighborhood movement to resist obnoxiousness. A few years back, some anonymous people calling themselves something like the "Church Hill Beautification Society" (Only it wasn't that. It was something more obnoxious.) started dropping nasty notes into people's mail slots. They called people's houses, color choices, and gardens … tacky. That, from people who were too tacky to identify themselves. The flamingos were set out in response. "Hah! You think that's tacky? How about this?" I'd have put out flamingos myself, except that I don't have a front yard to put them in.
The poison pen notes stopped soon after, but we still have quite a lot of flamingos around the 'hood.
Despite the cold, it was great to get out today. I don't know when's the next time I'll get to go for a walk. My mom is having foot surgery tomorrow morning, the same operation that Oz had the summer before last, so I'm going to be walking for two for a while. Indoors. Fetching and carrying. I may even have to stay at her house for a few days. Ugh! No Internet! And Oz will be left to his own devices. He's all "Woo! I can watch bad movies and eat chips!" I'm glad somebody has something to look forward to.
293 words | February 15, 2007 10:57 PM | ShutterbugI love it. I seem to remember in Cedar Rapids there was a tradition in certain church circles to put a huge flock of flamingos on the lawn of families with newborns.... Tacky, but great fun.
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at February 16, 2007 12:40 AMThat sounds nice, actually. I rather like the flamingos myself. I grew up in a whitebread suburb where no one would ever dream of putting flamingos on their lawn. It was bad enough if you had a scruffy lawn. I think the flamingos are cute and more visually interesting than, say, a tasteful hedge of Japanese holly.
Just north of Richmond, the town of Ashland used pink flamingos in their fight to keep out Wal-Mart, as chronicled in Store Wars. A friend of mine who lives up there said, "Well, we lost to Wal-Mart, though we did get a smaller, cuter Wal-Mart. But it looked neat having the flamingos all over town."
Posted by: 100 word minimum at February 16, 2007 09:26 AM