New Deal Art Mural Prompts Troubling Questions:

Will Our Kids or Grandkids Ever Ice Skate Outdoors In NJ Again?

Mural in Bordentown Post Office depicts skaters on Crosswicks Creek

[Update: 12/31/14 – just learned that the above mural is part of the Living New Deal inventory, and it is titled: “Skating on Bonaparte’s Pond” – there are 25 other NJ New Deal Art Projects inventoried – check it out here.]

Skating away —
skating away —
skating away on the thin ice of the New Day.  ~~~ “Skating Away on the  Thin Ice of The New Day”  (Jethro Tull – listen)

It’s about 95 degrees right now.

I walked over to the Post Office to mail some bills.

Entering the building was like walking into a cool dark cave.

But, as I waited in line for stamps, my eyes were drawn to the mural above the door to my left.

It’s a wonderful example of New Deal Art – something we don’t do anymore. The Art – or the Post Office.

(BTW, to learn the history, I Googled “Bordentown NJ Post Office mural” – and got zero hits. In contrast, I get millions of hits for cat pictures, but none for a lovely mural).

A fact which immediately made me angry as I chatted with my neighbors about the mural and what it  meant. All agreed I had a good point.

In addition to the decline in arts and culture, Post Offices, libraries, museums, schools, parks, trails, forests, reservoirs, hospitals, public housing, and infrastructure that were built during the New Deal period now are closing or crumbling or shrinking into decrepitude and neglect.

Or being sold off and privatized for pennies on the public dollar.

Literally, a war on All things public – a deep austerity at home while we waste billions on obscene wars and imperial military adventures and The National Security State.

As a result of the abandonment of the New Deal politics in favor of Neoliberal Wall Street finance capitalism and austerity at home – coupled with an imperial foreign policy and “Free Trade” abroad – US unemployment, debt, home foreclosures, bankruptcies, homelessness, prison populations, urban race and income segregation, inadequate education,  deindustrialization, insecurity, rage, drug abuse, domestic violence against women, and hopelessness are at all time highs.

Some have even described our times as “The New Jim Crow” – we live in “surreal times” –  suffering “The New Gilded Age” – living under a system of “Managed Democracy – Inverted Totalitarianism“.

But aside from the political questions, there was a much deeper and more troubling question: the scene depicted in that mural is gone as well.

And unlike the dismantling of the New Deal, which can be rebuilt (see the wonderful efforts to do just that over at The Living New Deal), the skating – and the climate it relied on –  ain’t coming back  [and the “Polar Vortex” is weather, not climate].

Yes, it’s 95 degrees out right now, but we won’t see many more years of outdoor ice skating.

But what will we say when our grandchildren will look at that mural and ask us –

“Hey Pop, what are those kids doing? Looks pretty cool!”

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on.  ~~~ “River”  (Joni Mitchell, listen)

Bordentown NJ Post Office – built during New Deal