Signs of The Times
An object lesson on the Avenue


The horse representing Robert E. Lee's Traveller, of the Lee statue on Monument
Avenue, peering off the pedestal, via David Rencher at lumis.com.


Dear billion-eyed audience:

I'm just busy. And drugged.

Yesterday spent bulk of afternoon in specialist dental chair and then again this morning, and now on a course of painkillers and penicillin. Up to three in the a.m. killing my lovelies in Ragtime In Richmond. Tonight, a board meeting at the Firehouse Theater, then home for more finessing, eradicating and revising. Rewriting is writing. I keep telling myself.

I'm also behind at the office on numerous things, and kind of woozy headed. I have a root canal in my future, and an "implant." Not that kind. But in my upper jaw. A tooth that is not a tooth.

But this I want to share.

So it's past four in the afternoon, and I'm bustling across loverly Monument Avenue, that I'm fortunate to traverse perhaps two or three times a day, and , and I hear the click clock of high heels on sidewalk pavement; these are not Sunday heels, these are I'm Sexy On Tuesday heels.

I assume this, of course, as my attention gravitates across the green median of the urbane boulevard as I'm walking, and there she is, a blonde with a bounteous pony tail, a silky green baring blouse, lithe arms, black pants and strappy pumps, also black. She is preparing to enter an apartment house. A hostess at a restaurant, perhaps, or going to a party, I'm not sure, but as I am watching her progress, she veers away from the steps and makes a deliberate negotiation into the scruffy grass in front of the first floor balcony where, as I see for the first time, a McCain-Palin sign has been thrust.

Our Girl, with an annoyed twist of her mouth, yanks the political advertisement out of the ground, and her elbows bent in that angry way, she pushes through the apartments front door as though intending to slap the sign over the head of whoever is in there.

Now, I realize, this scene is getting enacted across the country and I surmise, perhaps, that the other guys got a few signs pulled up and tossed away in just this way, somewhere else in the City of Richmond this afternoon. Statistical chances are good in that way.

But for me, the pleasure of hearing those 4 o'Clock Heels on the sidewalk, and her expression and the decisiveness with which she carried out her removal of the message that irritated her, was yet another reason why I enjoy walking where I'm going whenever I can.

Now forgive me, I have much to do and not much time. Back in a couple days.