This is written in a piece of artwork on the side of a building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from where I used to work. It’s near the Lechmere station on the green line, across the street from the Dunkin’ Donuts. The building is an old brick one (a lot of these house antique stores and the like), asnd a couple of years ago someone put up scaffolding on the side of this building and painted this weird mural, with the above quote.
This cost quite a few bucks, obviously, but I still don’t know who put the damned thing up! It’s not signed. It hasn’t attracted any publicity, like the “whaling walls” up here in various New England cities.No group is given credit.
The mural depicts a lot of animals, suggesting that this is by the ASPCA or the MSPCA or even PETA, but you’d think one of them would be claiming credit. There’s also an arc of people at the top. These people must be, you think, famous humanitarians or animal activists or something. Maybe there’s a clue there, somewhere.
OK, let’s see – THAT guy looks like he might be Charles Darwin. HE might be Aristotle. That guy looks like Frederick Douglass – hunh? Well, he was a humanitarian, after all. THAT guy HAS to be Gandhi – OK, humanitarians and people activists make the grade. But that lady looks like… ELVIRA? If it’s not ELVIRA, then it’s someone who dresses just like her! What the heck…?
Does anybody know anything about this wall, or what it’s supposed to be? Did Elvira hire people to paint it? Did one of the painters have the hots for Cassandra Peterson? Inquiring Minds Want to Know.
You may be on to something with the Elvira thing. During the Rennsa… Renesanc… Rennescan… 1400 and 1500’s when people would commission artists, they often had themselves cast in the background. It is quite common to see a painting of St. George and the Dragon with a DeMedici in the crowd.
I wonder if there is some point to be made that those who “speak” for animals are equivalent to those who spoke for humans. She who sprays red paint on fur coats at a fashion show is doing the world as great a service as Mahatma Ghandi on an hunger strike.
“We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
–George Thorndike Angell, 1869
It’s an SPCA thing. Check out the MSPCA for more information. I couldn’t find anything specifically about the memorial though.
Thanks, Lsura (how do you pronounce that, anyway?). I expected it must be MSPCA or something like that, but the weird part is the collection of people. Just who the heck ARE they? And why is Elvira there? I don’t think I’m mistaking some woman from the turn of the century in a dress gown for her, either. Not unless the dress gown comes with an impressive bosom, deep cleavage, eyeliner, and Big Hair. (And if it has, I’ve located that elusive Historical Epoch I’d like to live in.)
