David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Fire Hydrants as Art

Fire hydrants as objets d’art?  If the concept seems bizarre, then you haven’t been to Milford,  Connecticut lately where ninety-nine of the emergency water sources around downtown have been   painted in startling colors and clever designs.  But if you want to witness these fire plugs in inspired and fanciful attire you’d better go soon.  Unfortunately, before long they’ll be repainted lemon yellow.  They may be bright in this customary color specified by local ordinance, but relatively dull compared with their current splendor.

Driving into town on business a few weeks ago, I spied a hydrant decked out in red white and blue.  The barrel was painted white with red vertical stripes.  At first I chalked it up to an isolated case of patriotic enthusiasm.  But then I saw another with a floral design, and yet another multi-chromed and whimsically abstract, and still another arrayed as a bearded fisherman in a yellow slicker.  There seemed a kind of Midas magic in turning ordinary workaday street furniture into pieces of art.  Milford must be full of imaginative, civic minded, and artistic people who care about the place where they live, I thought.

The River's Pulse: Fifty-Two Haiku Weeks Along the Farmington (part 5: July)

July
cracked muddy edges
in blazing sun-strangled drought
gooey barrier

moonlight with streetlight
and house lamps dance and shimmer
reach for stars below

sunset water burns
shifting rainbows and oil slicks
a day floats away

pickerelweed grows
pointed leaves where current sleeps
summer’s ruffled edge

A couple blocks from my home, the Farmington River is the largest tributary of the Connecticut.  From Tinker's Damn, Homebound Publications, 2013,http://homeboundpublications.com/store/books/tinkers-damn/

Disappearing Street Furniture

Street furniture.  We pass by it daily, but barely see it.  Practical infrastructure designed to facilitate travel, communication, and safety, such objects include directional signs, mail boxes, phone booths, benches, bollards, street lamps, sculptures, fire hydrants and emergency call systems.  All eminently useful, they tend to noticed mostly by their absence when we need them.

Until a few years ago, my first morning act was to walk down the street with a few coins and get the newspaper from a vending box or kiosk half a block away.  If for some reason the box was out of order, there were two other locations nearby.  As dawn approached one day, I arrived at the spot where my preferred box was chained to a utility pole.  It was missing.  A short walk revealed that the others were gone as well.  At first I suspected vandalism.  Further inquiry, however, revealed something much worse.  On calling the offices of the Hartford Courant, which proudly trumpets itself as “America’s oldest continuously published newspaper,” I learned that cold economics had dictated the demise of street corner vending.  Today, one is more likely to find a hitching post for horses in a Connecticut town (still rarely seen at roadside) than a news box.