Long-suffering Lincoln

[Updated, with illustration!]
Vandalism at Lincoln Memorial recalls a precursor in Buffalo some 15-plus years ago:

                                                                        On a statue in Delaware Park,
                                                                        almost as old as Noah's ark,
                                                                        some disrespectful, disreputable fellow
                                                                        sprayed Abraham Lincoln's hair bright yellow.

                                                                        It's despicable. It's deplorable.
                                                                        Sunny-side up
                                                                        he looks adorable.

That sixties suburban sweet spot, revisited

My wife grew up on a leafy cul-de-sac in West Seneca, NY, a suburb of Buffalo. Her house, like I think most of the houses on the street, was a comfortable split-level (2500 sq feet, built 1954) with a good-sized yard.

Yesterday, at a family brunch, my wife started asking her fifty-something siblings what the parents of various friends on the block did for a living. Her brother had almost all the answers; her dad filled in a few more this morning. I am changing the names but perserving the ethnicities.

Mr. Grimm was a bricklayer. Mr. Wojick was a foreman at the Ford plant. Mr. Majewski worked in a bronze casting factory, as did one other neighbor. Mr. Cobb worked in product safety at Fisher-Price.  Mr. Frank was a stockbroker. Tombari sold insurance. Panetta was a meat wholesaler.  White was a concrete contractor working mainly on bridges. Carlotti was a dentist (and my father-in-law, an oral surgeon). The Murphys, husband and wife, were teachers, and so were the Stones. Burger was a roofer.

That is a pretty wide range of livelihoods, isn't it? Perhaps it's not so different today. The price of comparable homes in West Seneca today is $179k; metro Buffalo skipped both housing boom and housing bust. There are fewer factory workers, natch.  And I suspect that the dentists and stockbrokers probably live elsewhere. The area has had its share of McMansion building, and you can get a castle in the outer burbs for under $350k. 

Return to Oz: Buffalo Garden Walk 2009

This past weekend was the annual urban miracle in Buffalo, home to the nation's largest open urban Garden Walk.



















The creativity is staggering -- and it's as much about found objects and easy integration of dramatic urban backdrops as about the profusions of perennials that Buffalo gardeners favor. Somehow these intense, concentrated urban Ozzes make bigger suburban gardens seem pallid.

Pics from 2008 Walk are here; from 2007, here. And in case you missed it above, 09 is here.