You may have seen this already, but in case you haven’t, or just to refresh your memory, this is the official logo of the Republican National Convention, to be held in Minneapolis next year:

Need I add that the fun has already begun?

And yes, this is real, not an extremely clever photoshop job, and truly encapsulates what the Republican Party is all about.

Wide stance? Check.

In Minneapolis? Check.

Prison stripe-wearing? Check.

Starry eyed? Check.

As for the elephant humping the “2008″…

Are they going for a “Still screwing the country in 2008″ theme, or is it a reference to hypocritical adulterers like David Vitter and just about the entire Republican presidential field?

All of the above? Check!

Apparently they ran out of space for a collapsing bridge.

Well here, let me take care of that little missing detail…

And just think: we’ve got nearly a whole year still to go. Woo hoo!

UPDATE:

Welcome, DailyKos visitors!

Duke S is collecting links to the many new logo ‘adaptations’…

RNC 2008 Wide Stance Logo Is Propagating In The Tubes

Heh! Indeedy! ~

Posted: October 7th, 2007 under 2008 Republican National Convention, I-35W Bridge Collapse, Republicans.
Comments: 2

Climbing the Mississippi River Bridge by Bridge: Volume 2: Minnesota
by Mary Charlotte Aubry Costello

 

When an elementary school art teacher in Davenport, Iowa instructed her fifth grade students to study and sketch the local Mississippi River bridges one semester, probably neither the teacher nor her students nor anyone else had any inkling that a decades-long labor of love was about to begin. 

Mary Charlotte Aubry Costello’s fascination with the Mississippi River and especially its hundreds of bridges continued after her fifth graders’ study unit ended.   A few years later when she took early retirement, Costello gathered up her sketchbooks and art supplies and a camera and embarked on a quest:  to sketch every bridge across the Mississippi River, from the Louisiana delta all the way north to the headwaters in Lake Itasca.

During the course of her many trips  south and north from her Iowa home, Costello not only sketched the bridges but also collected as much information about them as she could. She spoke to engineers, DOT personnel, bridge designers, construction workers, railroad administrators, bridge-tenders, historians, and citizens who lived along the river.  She wrote down bridge histories from newspaper articles, railroad companies, the Coast Guard, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

In 1995, nearly twenty years after Costello set out on her expedition of discovery, the first of two volumes of her artwork was published:

Climbing the Mississippi River Bridge By Bridge, Volume 1(from Louisiana to Minnesota)

Seven years later, in 2002 Volume 2 was published, containing sketches of all 135 of Minnesota’s Mississippi River bridges. 

By coincidence, Mister Tild checked out Volume 2 from the Eden Prairie Library about a week before the I-35W bridge collapsed.    In the weeks after the collapse,  when it came time to either return the book to the library or renew it, we finally realized what we had in Costello’s comprehensive compendium of bridge information. We turned to the entry for ”Bridge 39″,  ie: Minnesota’s 39th bridge across the Mississippi as you travel north from the Iowa border:

For each of the 135 bridges in Volume 2, Costello has included a paragraph or two of background information.  It’s impossible to miss the irony in the last lines about Bridge 39:

  

Oddly, in the aftermath of the bridge collapse there’s been no sudden spike of interest in these books.  When I looked in the Hennepin County Library catalog last week, most of the 14 copies of Volume 2 that are in the system were checked in.  

The fruits of Mary Charlotte Aubry Costello’s labor of love have been widely praised by historians, bridge designers and engineers.  Both volumes of Climbing the Mississippi River Bridge By Bridge are cited often in Wikipedia entries and other reference works.  Complete with a glossary of bridge terms, descriptions  and diagrams of different types of bridges, these volumes are essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about our bridges’ past, present, and possible futures.

~

  

Posted: October 1st, 2007 under Books, I-35W Bridge Collapse, Mary Charlotte Aubry Costello, the Reading Room.
Comments: none

Got back from Yearly Kos late Sunday night, and I expect I will be posting some thoughts and reminiscences about that before the week is over, but as usual,  life intervenes in all our plans and comes up with stuff to do that just can’t wait, so it’s slow slogging and light blogging for me at the moment.

Also, it’s been a week and I still haven’t commented about the I-35W bridge collapse.   At my house, most of us had arrived home from our various jobs and daytime activities at about 6 PM that day.  My spouse called at  6:20 and asked what was all this he just heard about the I-35W bridge over the river near University collapsing?  We turned on the TV and watched in shock, and I must confess I’m still in shock a week later.  I’m remembering  something the hub said that evening, tho, something along the lines of “This is a blot on our reputation. We’re the competent state; the high quality of life state.  Stuff like this just doesn’t happen in Minnesota. ”
 
A powerful letter in the Spring Grove Herald yesterday reiterated that statement…

(h/t Ollie Ox)

LETTER: Collapsed bridge = no new taxes

Last night while my daughter, Emily, and I watched, “So You Think You Can Dance” (it’s the only reality show we watch. Honest!), one of the celebrity judges referred to the tragedy in Minneapolis and requested that the audience keep Minnesotans in their prayers.

My first reaction was, “Isn’t that nice of him.” Following right on the heels of that reaction came reaction No. 2, which was a strange feeling of what I would call embarrassment.

We are Minnesotans. We don’t want sympathy. We don’t need sympathy! We get things done and we do things right. In fact we do things better then everyone else! We have the best roads, the best schools, the best health care, the best place to live and raise your children.

We may have been one of the highest taxed states in the nation but we were also the best state in the nation and we had an intense sense of pride for that reason, until Wednesday evening at approximately 6 p.m.

For me, the phrase, “no new taxes,” will forever be accompanied by the picture of that collapsed bridge.

Joanne Griffin

Spring Grove

~~~

In sync with that sentiment is this new bumper sticker, courtesy of insideminnesotapolitics.com  ….

The designer is NOT taking royalties for these. To order the “No New Collapses” bumpersticker, either click on the image or here. 

~~~

 

 

Posted: August 8th, 2007 under General, I-35W Bridge Collapse.
Comments: none