And the award for artistic excellence in public art in Nebraska goes to......

 Grant County for having the most wonderfully uncommercially, totally American work of art announcing their existence in all of Nebraska that we have seen so far, which is quite a lot...I'm sure, or I like to believe, that 50 or 60 years ago, the landscape was dotted with this sort of thing created by people who were proud of who they were and what they did, wanted the world to know, and took it upon themselves to say it.  No need for some glossy commercial sign company to tell their story ...

and to Benda Land and Cattle, about 10 miles south of Alliance, Nebraska, for their ranch sign, a true work of art that didn't need to be so great, but it is...Seen a lot of ranch and farm signs, functional, fanciful, ideocryncratic in their way, lots of well executed wrought iron work, but none that made me want to jam on the breaks and take a picture.  Some were good, but did not stand out, and were not art...So says me, anyway...

This is a picture of the "sandbox"...

In a state which announces its presence with all of the tedium of a lecture on composting or oral hygiene, and has nothing more to say about itself than that it is the home of Arbor Day and the good life, there is a failure of imagination somewhere along the way in terms of advertising the mystery, grandeur, and transcendental quality of this magical place, and letting people know how fortunate they are to be part of it, for however long they are there, so it was more than nice

 to see that there are people with the imagination and an appreciation for the handcrafted sign that was once a hallmark of the American landscape.  A runner up award has to go to Wauneta, Nebraska not so much for the sign itself, but for the sentiment, which must qualify it for the Miss Congeniality award of signs...

The graphics are neither here nor there, but the sentiment, "Half way between here and there" says nothing and says it all in 6 words.  Brilliant!!  Who ever came up with that encapsulation of Nebraska in a nutshell deserves the Willa Cather award for what ever literary category it is that they might fall into, maybe advertising double talk.

I have often said that it takes someone from the loud, claustrophobic, piss stained streets of the endless neon night time frenzy that is New York City to appreciate western Nebraska, or all of Nebraska for that matter for what it is.  Quiet, serene, and otherworldly, with uncommonly friendly people who wave at you, and mean it.

Exhibit A:  You don't want to live there, believe me...It is quite amazing how a New Yorker can tell you to "Have a nice day" with affect that ranges from disinterest to distain to out right hostility...and they mean it too.  After a few days of this you will agree with Dorothy's sentiments that "There's no place like home".  Which segues nicely into a great sign I saw in Kansas heading north into Nebraska in a town named Home

Which brings me to one of many pet peeves about the decline of the America that once had an identity and knew who it was.  So many of the signs welcoming us here and there have changed.  They are, across the board glossy, bland, commercial, and outsourced to some professional graphic design firm who applies some standardized metric to their work, thereby creating a homogeneity  which deprives us of something intrinsic, saying nothing about ourselves, but apparently saying it well in the eyes of the bureaucrats in some cubicles in Lincoln or Albany, or where ever, who contract for and approve such things.  This process is symptomatic of a failure of imagination that is endemic in the US and is at the core of our decline.   Woe is us, an extension of what I've been saying in my posting on the US post Office (See posting of 7/25/11 on US Post Office).

                                                                       Pablo