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A return to the greenway (for me and vandals)

I got the chance to run the new greenway today.

I merely walked it the other night (in dress shoes).

But it feels a lot better in running shoes. And looks just as inviting in the light of day.

I picked it up at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park and took it to Lawndale Crossing Shopping Center.

Oddly, most people seemed content today to walk or run the circular driveway in the park rather than take the greenway. I personally hate running in circles.

There is plenty of shade along most of the route and very few hills. The scenery is interesting. Today, some kids were holding a car wash along Battleground Avenue, accompanied by a band. (I couldn't tell which school.) A pair of cats warily eyed me along the same spot I saw them Thursday night.

Alas, however, the grafitti vandals are back.

There are faint scrawlings in the Cone underpass ... it's hard to tell whether that's because it was cleaned or because it didn't take well because of the protective coating the city planned to apply.

Anyway, I'd wish these people would get some exercise rather than waste time defacing public property.

Idiots.

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Posted by Allen Johnson on Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 3:48 pm

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Christopher Rees

August 23, 2010 - 9:21 am EDT

So much grafitti is inane and silly that I take your point. But I must admit that I'm rather enamoured of good grafitti.
In the couple of years after Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, British unemployment exploded to levels not seen since the 30's, as Maggie sloughed off millions of public sector "pretend jobs", as she called them.
The anxiety and anger were almost palpable, as Britain was forced to take its medicine. Parenthetically, the years of corrupt Keynesianism had brought the country to its knees, and the monetarist free-market policies she implemented led to a long term boom that made Britain the fourth largest economy in the World, just a few years later.
But around 1980 a piece of grafitti appeared on a railway bridge overlooking one of the main road arteries into downtown Leeds. It addressed the pain and despair of unemployment in a particularly poignant way.
It read simply : " Neither work nor leisure".
I'm sure half of the people of Leeds still remember that very poltical and pointed comment.
It hit home.
Grafitti can have its place.