Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 28, 2021

The I-was-here artifacts are not so bad, it’ the old gum where you put your hand.

My family said:

Fools’ names, like fools’ faces are often found in public places.

And we were trained (that saying being part of it) to NOT do the graffito equivalent of peeing on a tree…

And at some Universities the Student Union had preserved the maltreated tables in the dinning area as “Historic Treasures” because some of the carvings were late 1800’s – early/mid 1900’s. No kids can go look at the tables and see polyeurethane coated writings of their great-great and Great-grandparents, or may just grand parents.

But an artifact is an object, not graffiti.

If only they would stop leaving locks on bridges as well!

I like the fact that she realizes the selfie generation is obnoxious!

Maybe there is hope for the future!

If you carve your name on a park bench nowadays you also have to live stream it on Tiktok or Tictac or whatever.

Some graffiti is a brag. Some is a cry to be noticed. Some graffiti is artistic, depictive. Some is full of rage, expressive. All might be called icons of periods of human existence. And like all things human, likely to change in the blink of an eye.

On a window in Anne Hathaway’s house (Shakespeare’s wife, not the actress) in Stratford England Sir Walter Scott among others scratched his name on the glass with his diamond ring.

Other than the fact that skateboarders grind all the edges to a frayed mess…

Obnoxious? A pretty strong epithet to categorize an entire cohort.

Boldt Castle has graffiti going back nearly a hundred years

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556124253963748478/

My all-time favorite graffito occurred back in the Vietnam War era. On a prominent billboard on University Avenue here in Madison, someone had spray-painted the ubiquitous counter-cultural sentiment “Question Authority!”.

Right underneath it, someone else had added “Why should I?”.

In my day, all men and boys carried pocket knives. Then they banned them in schools, and few bothered to carry them elsewhere. The reduction in carved graffiti is largely due to fewer knives in circulation, and graffiti in general due to everyone carrying smart phones which let them put their feelings on the internet.

And let’s not even get started on Beech trees.

I think graffiti ages like wine. I got a kick out of learning that Pompei’s has been preserved.