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Year Of The Ox? Seems Like Year Of The Bear To Us
January 31, 2009
And no, we’re not talking about the stock market.
We’re talking about real bears. Giant bears. Or at least real-looking giant bears.
Unnoticed by the navel-gazing media, big bears have been all over the news this past week:
– In Bigfork, Montana, artist Bob Stayton has just completed two bronze nine-foot-tall dancing bears as an entry sculpture for a luxury condominium complex. The new condos may never sell, but they’ll always be easy to find.
– In Redmond, Washington, sculptor Lorenzo Ghiglierito is building an unspecified number of terrifying 15-foot-tall grizzly bears to stand outside of Brown Bear Car Washes in the Pacific Northwest. The bears were commissioned by the chain’s owner, a 2007 inductee into the Car Wash Hall of Fame. “This,” he said, “was something I wanted to share with the public.”
– In Denver, Colorado, the press was all over a Facebook-launched campaign to remove the gaudy horse colossus from the entry road to Denver International Airport (It turned out to be a pointless exercise). But buried in the stories was this overlooked nugget: the campaign’s organizer wanted to replace the horse with “the big blue bear peeking into the windows of the Denver Convention Center.”
Serendipity? Unconscious foresight? If hard times make us yearn for big bruins, then maybe old favorites like Smokey and Henry and the angry bear with the fish will find new friends. Even poor bear-crossed Hugh Glass might get some attention this year, although travelers to his cairn may need to borrow a Chinese ox to get there.
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