By-Gully Bike Path, Springfield

I didn’t know this path had a bona fide name until the Rosa Parks Path construction forced me to take a slightly different route into it and I discovered the sign. It is such a delightful name that I would walk here all the time except that the gully slash drainage ditch is on the fetid side, not to mention that the path parallels the freeway. And plus the walk back through the neighborhood has no sidewalks, which wasn’t such a big deal when it was just me and Jones but maneuvering a dog and baby juggler is more challenging. I wish I could call it a pram.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Rosa Parks Path, Springfield

When Eugene decided to name a big street after Martin Luther King Jr., spunky Springfield refused to comply and kept their own name for the street when it crosses the city boundary. So MLK Blvd becomes Centennial; yet another sign of the differences between our neighboring burgs. But the city padres did see fit to name this bike and ped path after another civil rights luminary, and there is even a little gazebo with a bench for resting, which I guess Rosa would have liked. The graffiti underscores the inner conflicts stirred up by such a monument in Springfield:  Rosa Parks was a commie.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Rosa Parks Path, Springfield

Is this truly a bona fide job now–holding a pizza shaped like a guitar at a busy intersection? And are these sign-holding gigs reflected in employment statistics? What is the return on investment, i.e., how many people are inspired by the guitar-shaped pizza and decide to turn right at Q St. for a stop at Little Caesars? The guy doing it does not seem demoralized. This is the guy with the kinetic sculpture bike made to look like a jet plane. The sign is slung from his shoulder like an actual guitar and he keeps up a steady rocking as the inexorable traffic flows by. My impulse is to say that this work is undignified, all the more so because it is so public. But maybe I’ve read too much Hemingway lately, because when we passed him on our way back down the path, I thought that perhaps whatever dignity we bring to a task endows it with honor in defiance of pathos.  Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Cat poop consumed: no