Each carried a “tax preparation” sign, the two women dressed in green “statue of Liberty” and waved at passing cars on opposite side of the road.
I guess it’s Census time, Tax time and Super Bowl time.
And the seasons turn, turn, turn.
Our reclusive Salinger was gone for ever in the rye field. His protagonist Caulfield however lives on in the mind of New Yorker.
In Fame, the Arts students ask each other: will anyone remember us?
I guess the Statue of Liberty, a centennial gift from the French , will be the most enduring one.
It looks scholarly, artsy and so…..liberte! Location, location, location. It is placed where you would normally find a lighthouse, supposedly to welcome strangers and stranded expats home.
Unlike what we would normally experience at LAX or JFK back from overseas.
If First impressions last forever, then the US has a lot of PR work to do.
But then, the assault on the senses continue to build: the sound of bodies blocking and bones crushing on the football field, huge jacked-up trucks that spin when making a turn on a rainy street (the car just ahead of me yesterday), supermarkets with thousands of items but nothing to eat, at least, immediately (like hot soup, or hearty home-made meals). But everything is forgiven when the light dims out, and the show starts: “Ladies and gentlemen, may you join me to welcome …..” (drum roll, and the Oscar goes to….). Every American an aspired American Idol.
All of a sudden, “Life is beautiful” again. America, forever young, full of energy and fun-loving . Young and old, everyone joins in this frame of mind: that everything that could be thought of can be done, and will be done. “Make the world your playground” says the early Ford ad. James Dean’s red jacket. Rebel with or without a cause. Trading up and falling down. Everyone seems to move with herd instinct at shutter speed: whether to find a good deal on Black Friday or throw the beats on Mardi Gras. America never seems to miss a beat on what is new, what is hip and what is bleeding-edge (female race driver near-miss on speedway).
Yes, we are falling behind in airport infrastructure (no airport has comfortable seating, maybe except for Japan where our Stateless China Terminal man lingered for three months), but if you had seen a Vegas implosion ( Sands casino), you couldn’t help but “wow”, because in its place a few years later, you would find all these new and personalized establishments such as Wynn and Aria.
And there is a Statue of Liberty there as well at New York casino.
So I rest my case. Maybe it’s not the first time that there are two Statues of Liberty found in the US. New York and Vegas already beat us to the punch.
Now two more from Liberty Tax franchise that I can count. At least, they haven’t become as trivialized as Santa.
Santa and Statue of Liberty both had their origins in Europe, dressed in costume and forever left an enduring mark on the American culture.
Both welcome either kids or strangers and represent two iconic figures. From their points of view (chimney and Ellis Island), our problems seem small indeed.
Freedom from fear of persecution (including the belief that these myths are just “toys for tots”).
No wonder pundits keep saying there are only two uncontested truths: tax and death, in that order, unless the IRS failed to update its database.
Thang Nguyen 555 