Lincoln by a neck
It was Wednesday morning and I had just finished a short interview at JPR for the Jefferson Daily show. The topic for discussion was the vandalism that resulted in the fourth decapitation of our statue of Lincoln since its installation in 1915. Some interesting phone calls came in with comments and suggestions to discourage future vandalism.
One was that statues and artwork that get vandalized repeatedly be relocated to the front of the police station. For this to work all the protected pieces should be surrounded by a chain linked fence, topped by razor wire. Guard dogs, alarms, land mines and flame throwers were not mentioned, but seemed about to be discussed before the announcer took another call.
This time it was suggested that the statue be electrified to provide any prospective vandal with a shocking new reality. In practice, evil-doers would be scattered around the statue like fried insects at the bottom of a bug zapper. Another caller thought that public art should not have protrusions that might be broken off and the whole work coated with an impervious polymer, making it easy to erase any offensive graffiti. I could only think of a 12-foot tall bowling ball with no finger holds. All art would resemble defensive fortifications, difficult to mark and impossible to break.
Currently, there is a fake surveillance camera mounted on the top of a street light near our headless Lincoln that should be replaced by a Wi-Fi camera that could be tightly focused on Abe, saving the video to a hard drive. The city already has Wi-Fi on the Plaza and a local merchant has offered to buy the camera. We could make Lincoln visible through the Internet and give the next vandal his/her 15 minutes of fame, then a chauffeured ride in the back of a squad car for a long-remembered photo and fingerprinting session.
A park official went on to decry the extent of vandalism we currently experience and mentioned a couple of examples. He mentioned the recent theft of the cherub from the top of the Perozzi fountain in Lithia Park. The kidnapped baby angel was commissioned by former planning director John Fregonese and had a remarkable likeness to one of John's baby pictures, which was rumored to having been sent to a sculptor in Italy as an example of what we expected. The fact that Fregonese speaks Italian is a mere coincidence, so I do not want to be hearing any grumblings about such circumstantial evidence. Drop it.
The park official on the line then blamed our soon-to-be-returned totally renovated Lithia Water fountain, which may or may not be working yet this summer, on the misdeed of a vandal. The truth of the matter is that the fountain had been slowly degrading over the decades due to deferred maintenance and little attention to detail. The basins were replacements and were so heavy that their corroded metal support brackets were already taxed to the limit before some clown climbed atop one. The weight of the vandal caused the brackets to fail. The basin could have been slapped back on, but after some thought it was decided to renovate it top to bottom, including the worn out plumbing, which is concealed beneath the Plaza. Vandalism did not shut down the fountain for two years, rather it was due to an extensive and long overdue refurbishment using manufacturers and suppliers from across the nation. Once reinstalled, the fountain will again sit proudly in the heart of the community.
We all have some lessons to learn from the acts of vandals. I feel that the most important thing is that our local history is being attacked and we should not simply sit back and expect the Ashland Police Department to be everywhere at once. If you spot vandals in action, break out the old cell phone and report it, while staying close enough to be able to indentify the culprits. Outsourcing the surveillance cameras to India is not the answer. You are the solution.
