Yo' mama's a tagger

When your mother can't resist tagging an overpass, you know something is seriously up with the universe.

This is the overpass at Cass Street on the Keystone Trail in west-central Omaha. Obviously Mom has found the sweet spot where nagging, unauthorized public art and exercise intersect.

In the public-policy arena, perhaps it's time the Omaha City Council considers cracking down on spray-paint sales to middle-age women.

Tag the Bridge. Tag It Nice.

In Nebraska, even the taggers are Nice. Maybe this Nice graffiti on Omaha's Keystone Trail can be part of the next "Visit Nebraska. Visit Nice" television commercial.

Or not.

Whatever.

Visit Favog. Visit Apathy.

Honk if you love the water

If it's June in Omaha, you'll find Canada geese nearly anyplace it's wet.

In this case, that would be the Little Papillion Creek along the Keystone Trail, where this caught my eye on my daily walk. It looks like the waterfowl are having themselves a little community swim.

I'll honk to that. Or they will. Somebody.

Still there, nowhere.

Spring is here, and the abandoned homeless camp in the middle of Omaha isn't.

Abandoned anymore, that is. When we visited the site in February, it appeared that the person or persons using the primitive flop had wisely flown the (ramshackle) coop for the winter.


Nestled in the treeline between a park and the Keystone Trail -- and across the Little Papillion Creek from an apartment complex and supermarket -- the rough lean-to shows signs of life. And liquor.

Bicyclists ride by and joggers plod past the wooded flop without noticing what, and who, might be yards away. Ditto for the skate-park skateboarders and the softball players.

Because you don't notice a shelter that isn't much of one, however, does not mean it's not there. And because we long ago stopped noticing those among us who are cash poor but -- oftentimes -- flush with addiction, mental illness or both, it doesn't mean they're not lurking among the trees and brush of the urban greenscape. 

Or perhaps a downtown bus shelter.

Or a park bench.

Maybe beneath an overpass.

Or a van down by the river, for all you know.

We want "something done" about the problem when the homeless start to annoy us. 

When they don't, it's all good -- we go back to worrying about the zombie apocalypse . . . which doesn't actually exist. 

The spiders, after all, aren't in our clothes.

Spicoli lives!

Last anyone saw of Jeff Spicoli, the dude was on the beach in Southern California, enveloped in an intoxicating haze.

Until today.

He's in Omaha -- absolutely. Because of the tasty waves on Carter Lake, no doubt. (Don't laugh. As windy as it's been around these parts lately. . . .)

Anyway, I didn't actually have an official Spicoli sighting, but I did see his handiwork while walking on the Keystone Trail today.

Look.

 

Spicoli was here.

 

And here.

And here.

And, for killer bud's sake, here.

When I find Mr. Spicoli, I shall prevail upon him to run for mayor. That would be totally bitchin'.

Dude!

No shelter at all

This was the view Friday of the homeless camp just off Omaha's Keystone Trail.

Sometimes, a crude shelter is no shelter at all -- no good against the cold and worthless in the snow. It looks like whoever was camped here is long gone . . . thankfully.

THE HIGH on Friday was 13. That was a big improvement over Thursday, which started out at 10 below.

If this is all the shelter you have, there's a word to describe you. That would be "dead."

Still, consider there are folks out there . . . in the cold. In rough camps not much better than this. It's what they call "home."

Ours is a society of cracks, through which "the least of these" fall, much like the snow through the gaps in this lean-to.

Lord, have mercy.

Disappearing in plain sight

This is the Keystone Trail, right in the middle of the middle of Omaha.

You'll find yuppies and bobos and DINKs and hipsters and bikers and joggers and slackers and workers and old folks up and down its paved pathway beside the Little Papillion Creek whenever the weather isn't totally unfortunate.

Sometimes, you'll find idiots like me there even when the weather is unreasonably unfortunate. Not today, however. Too much snow, too damned windy and cold.

Some things . . . some folks whom you might find there, you'd probably rather pretend aren't there -- there right under our reasonably affluent noses. But evidence is evidence.

Like this. Right under our noses.

IT'S QUITE easy today to routinely ignore what's right under our noses. In our society, we all live in our own little worlds, and we all live by those whose worlds are a lot like our own.

No longer are we forced to exist cheek and jowl with the great unwashed, so we don't.

And they become invisible, even when they're in plain sight. Or, as the case may be, tucked just into the tree line.

Would that all our failures were as out of sight and out of mind as the homeless, some of whom -- beset by mental illness, addiction or whatever -- never come in out of the cold. Even when it's snowy and 10 below, like it is this harsh February night in Omaha.

I hope whomever this encampment belongs to gave in to the siren song of central heating at a local shelter. A lean-to this crude can't keep out the snow, much less the subzero cold.

MAYBE WE fail to notice what's right under our noses -- or pretend we don't notice what's right under our noses -- because we're just overwhelmed. We are so overwhelmed by our own problems and clutter and, yes, demons that we figure we can't afford the luxury of contemplating or acknowledging those whose problems and clutter and demons have left them wandering through the Nebraska deep freeze.

As opposed to merely being distracted and stressed out.

Me, I don't know. I'm just spitballing here.

Whatever is the case, the evidence is clear that none are so blind as those who will not see. "Those," of course, being you. And you. And you.

And, by God, me.