SALON 26: A Powerful Army of Children Brandishing Paint Brushes & Crayolas!
Greetings Salon Visitors:
Since the only thing preoccupying my time and energy and passion lately is this big litter clean-up campaign I'm spearheading in Dunipace, Scotland, I thought I'd post some of the great posters the local children have done for the art poster contest I put together, with funding from Falkirk Environmental Trust...and a couple photos of what we're up against.
Although some of the "older youth" have created the "art display" on the bench with their under-aged drinking binges, 
the wee ones have created these posters. In fact, something like 1000 posters were created and we have to select the final 15 and top winner. But many of them are about to be displayed all over our community, too. It's been nothing but delight to go through the posters.
the wee ones have created these posters. In fact, something like 1000 posters were created and we have to select the final 15 and top winner. But many of them are about to be displayed all over our community, too. It's been nothing but delight to go through the posters.I'll be back in May with a new guest hostess but, for now, enjoy the children's work...and pick up your litter! This is an international problem, especially the plastic bag problem, now with bags filling our oceans.
Cheers,
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!
Michelle Miller Allen
posted by Spiritbear @ 1:44 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Excellent effort Michelle! Not only is the local environment getting a face-lift, the children are learning early-on about the importance of civic pride.
Children's art is perhaps the only honest art work out there and is usually loaded with a wondrous charm.
Kudos to your vision and energies to bring it about.
Thanks for the good words, Mark! I have had an amazing few days taking the posters around town to put in shop windows, pubs, library, etc. People are really responding to the originality of the art. And then telling me their personal stories with litter and litterer encounters. And we got a big spread in the local paper...so are hoping for a good turnout.
Yes, children's art is so honest. My special faves in this batch are the dog pooping posters. I set those aside for a special campaign we are starting on THAT issue...and the posters of dogs are hysterical...while pointing out a serious problem! They are just the pictures you need but no adult would ever draw!
Cheers,
Michelle
Oh, amendment to Mark, I bet YOU would draw a dog pooping poster if I asked, hah!
Grins, your biggest fan,
Michelle
Hi again, Michelle. I am so glad your campaign has worked so well. When you get through cleaning up Scotland, please come to my city and teach us some civic pride. It is always upsetting to see trash in the gutters and makes me wonder what mindset sees the world as their personal trash can. Perhaps it is a moment of feeling superior: "No worries, my servants will pick it up." Convoluted thinking, eh? "I'm so special that I can be base", something like that.
And of course, I would be more than happy to produce artwork of pooping puppies; its the arch of the back that must be precise! Haha. Here, dog owners have been a lot better about cleaning up after their pets in the nearby park where they have plastic sack dispensers at each end of the sward; not everyone does the right thing, but it used to be what I referred to as "a landscape of parked turds".
Your city and countryside must be so thankful for your vision and efforts to help the world be a prettier place in which to throw trash, I mean, keep clean. Keep up the good work!
I know it's rampant everywhere...they work hard in Jemez to keep it away...only the tourists keep driving through...but we have the adopt a highway program up there...
I did notice (it can take an outsider perspective sometimes) that when we visited Albuquerque last summer, overall it looked very much cleaner than ever before. I heard rumours that the current mayor is determined to clean up the city. Maybe you should send his office an email about the problems in your area.
The greatest initiative I've found so far is in Pittsburgh. A guy named Boris started it all... http://www.citizensagainstlitter.org/news/2008/april_2008_newslitter.html
My letter to them is posted on that page! Cool! I just saw that!
Anyway, Boris is my hero, go check these links.
...About Boris:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05107/489040.stm
What he wrote that started it all:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05092/481511.stm
His treatise:
http://www.citizensagainstlitter.org/about/cal-proposal.pdf
What does all this have to do with creativity? I know it does.
SpiritBear
PS--Our own litter blog, by the way...if you go to Google and type in "John Muir Litter Clean Ups Scotland" it should bring you to us. Or copy this link at Google and find us.
http://www.blogstoday.co.uk/bloghome.aspx?username=JohnMuirLitterCleanUps
Michelle: How interesting! I really liked the John Muir site, really well done. Nice to see you and Shaka in the photaes (isn't that the way you spell it yonder?).
As for Albuquerque, it is lots better than it used to be, for sure. Here they named the anti-litter program "TOSS NO MAS!". As for our mayor, his biggest push is to erase graffiti and wow, the paint is barely dry from miscreant/gang "art" and the city crews are on the scene, all it takes is a phone call. As a result, I rarely see horrid examples of graffiti, a good thing. Too, our mayor has a small army of clean up crews comprised of petty crime persons doing community service out cleaning things up like chain gangs, so there has been a big improvement overall. Hooray for our mayor, he really does a good job.
The trash I see on my neiborhood walks is mostly fast food wrappers, soda/beer cans or liquor bottles tossed from cars so the drinking drivers won't be caught with it. Odd, one never sees "go" boxes from French restaurants in the gutters or bottles of champagne!
I always police the street in front of my house, my little project; I can't believe how people can leave a plastic bottle or run-over can left in the street like an ugly carcass. A house down the street has a smoker son who cannot smoke in the house, so he smokes out front and uses the street as his personal ashtray, the zillion butts strewn about; such odd behavior. Another neighbor rakes their yard of leaves and litter then fling it into the street to blow away, I guess. So strange; their yard looks nice but is ruined by the rubble in the street. Go figure. Perhaps they think no one will connect the mess to them.
That said, I am so impressed with your efforts and those who showed up to improve your world. I could see that Shaka was on rock patrol as usual!
I also think you look sexy in day-glo green. Smiles all around, Mark
I particularly like the bunny that says"Don't let it go all messy". A worthy effort, indeed, Michelle. After moving back to the northern climes and enduring a rather snow filled winter, and when those snow piles finally melted it did resemble the aftermath of a small war or one REALLY wild party. Fortunately the local government remembered that this is the area where Earth Day started and I am amazed at how much has been cleaned up and quickly. Even the city of Milwaukee, where policy and programs can be debated for generations, has finally assigned, as part of sentencing, several groups of "taggers" to removing or painting over the mess that they and others of their ilk have created. And I feel I must share one more short story.
Through the east side of Milwaukee the Milwaukee River flows. It means something to me because it flows through a neighborhood that I lived in, about 30 years ago, and have very fond memories of. It is also the neighborhood that my parents grew up in and where both of my grandfathers settled when they immigrated to the States. My mother told me stories of how her and her siblings would go swimming in the river, in the 20's & 30's. I found this rather sad because in the 70's it was virtually dead. One of the projects on the first Earth Day was pulling out large debris;tires, box springs, shopping carts, etc. As the years have gone by more steps had been taken, including removing an old dam. I am very pround to say that salmon have been seen coming up the river from Lake Michigan as well as several other species of fish. Thirty to thirty-five years ago I would not have believed that I would see such a change in my lifetime. There is always hope. Thank you, Michelle, for planting the seed of hope in the next generation, what magnificant gift to the universe!
Thank YOU linc for the river story! I lived in Milwaukee too, back in the 70s, remember it fondly...it's so good to hear about that, because our River Carron needs help and I am hoping someday we can look back and laugh at the fact that there is truly a kitchen sink in it.
Mark, it's the disconnect...people don't see past their bedroom or their front step or their front yard...it's a matter of not feeling any investment or ownership beyond your nose. That's what I'm trying to change here, to get the kids to see that. We hope to move onto murals-under-the-overpass projects for them to do, too, to counteract the grafitti...that has seemed to work in other places (including Albuquerque).
I love hearing all the stories. For another great hit, Google what Bette Midler has done in NYC! The drug parks she's turned into community gardens! What a gal!
Last night I got to see some of the footage from the professional video we are having made of all this. A talented young man is doing it. WOW! I'm so excited! And got some great musicians lined up to let us use some of their music on it...kids and old folks interviewed about litter, great scenes of beautiful parts of our town and then suddenly cut into a scene like the one on the first page here of the pink sofas...really dramatic stuff! It's going to be something to see...we will have to have a big party here when it's ready...they can hook up a projector to the laptop and show the movie on the wall at our party!
Take care everyone, do what you love and love what you do and bring a litter bag with you!
:)
SpiritBear
Kudos to you Michelle for your efforts. I guess I was spoiled by living in Michigan so long. I remember telling my late husband I couldn't raise kids in Florida the year he wanted to move to Homestead, FL. Well, I could but I insisted on living no further south than Fort Lauderdale. He never asked my reasoning but I will share it. It was trashy!!! I just couldn't handle all the trash laying along side the roadways. Of course, several years later, he was glad I got stubborn, especially when a hurricane flattend Homestead.
I guess my Michigan years has turned me into a sorta "environmentalist". Food wrappers and empty bottles are driving me absolutely nuts!!! It's not the adults but maybe it is the adults that are NOT teaching kids to be responsible. Days are longer now and the weather is warmer. Kids are outside when it's not raining. What that means is paper wrappers and empty bottles are beginning to litter what little grass I see. I so badly want to be home just to tell those kids to "pick up that wrapper you just dropped" since parents can't seem to do it. Maybe the North Carolina school system needs to run the "Keep America Beautiful" champaign.
Apparently litter is pretty much everywhere; however, I have to say I have never seen such civic pride as in San Francisco, everything neat and tidy, at least the parts which I checked out. Also, when I visited relatives in Montgomery, Alabama, I was amazed at how often the streets were swept (here in Albuquerque we are lucky to have the streets swept twice a year, oddly just before house taxes are due, perhaps to remind us what our taxes pay for?), but in Montgomery, refuse trucks came around to pick up limbs and such, there were frequent garbage bin pickups, and of course, the mosquito trucks patrolled at night; too, I heard that if someone doesn't keep their lawn tidy, the City will do it and charge the occupant. I take walks every day, so I was hard pressed to find litter of any sort in either S.F. or Montgomery. Europe is quite keen on neatness and the most clean seemed to be Germany. I'm sure some would beg to differ according to their own observations, but it sure would be "lovely" to inspire pride in our surroundings on a large, nationwide scale. This could happen with efforts of involved persons such as Michelle and like-minded souls who wish to make a difference and get in there and deal with it.
Miche,
I'm so happy things are well with you. I have stayed legal and clean--met a puiblisher through AA who got me going on a ms. about prison life. I'm in second draft with my editor and he is encouraging ("realistic" "tense" and "visceral" are some of his marginalia.) I expect you've dropped me forever, but never count me out. I have not yet begun to fight. Well, actually, I have, but just. Be well and don't get washed into the ocean.
Claude
Good Cat!
At some point in ancient past I sent along your manuscript to your daughter, hope you are incorporating that into what you are writing now. Excellent to hear this!
Well, folks, I've been more than remiss about the blog but all the litter up to my ears, what can a gurl do!?!
I just got back from another wonderful meeting with local Brownies doing art for another part of our project. More amazing art...I gave them a 2-week deadline and they handed me 27 pieces of artwork in one hour. Now why can't adult humans be like that, eh?
I will get back to the blog in June...too many things happening right now but I do have a new guest arteeeeeeest standing in the wings (well, not really, she's way too busy for that!) and will bring her on stage in June.
Meanwhile, my new slogan is DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO AND BRING A LITTER BAG WITH YOU!
Cheers,
Michelle
I've finally come out from under all the rubbish! I have been in touch with three artists this week and we have a line-up for salons. starting next week through August. I will close this salone now and post a notice meanwhile...
Do what you love and love what you do!
Michelle/SpiritBear
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