Beauty and elegance of New Deal post offices threatened by budget cuts

                                  Murals at  a New Deal era post office in Modesto, California

Cultural historian Gray Brechin, head of the Living New Deal Project, reports the selling off of some of America's most important public places -- hundreds of post offices built during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.  Brechin's article in the Guardian laments the auction and possible destruction of many of these lovely, useful buildings, casualties of the manic budget cutting so characteristic of the Obama/Tea Party/Republican era -- the new "Dying Rotten Deal" perhaps?  (My words not Brechin's)

Gray's evocative essay show the price we pay for losing an enduring connection to history, the public arts and civic culture as our co-called "leaders" stampede to comply with demands of today's barbarian oligarchs.

"Roosevelt shared with other New Dealers a considerably more expansive notion of what the US could achieve. He forecast that "one hundred years from now, my administration will be known for its art, not for its relief." The New Dealers envisioned a new Renaissance. Its successors are knocking that legacy down to the highest bidder, and with it goes what we once were and might yet be."

The Maobama T-shirt

From a gift shop in Shanghai comes the Maobama T-shirt, also available on coffee mugs and other merchandise.  This would have been a lot more fun a couple of years ago, when we actually believed that Barack Obama would be a progressive, "transformative" president instead of what he's revealed himself to be at this point -- a very conservative, uninspiring politician. 

Contest: Suggest a new name for Glacier Park

As a little boy in the middle 1950s , I visited Glacier Park with my parents who'd grown up in Montana and knew terrain well.  There were a good many glaciers back then, definitely an impressive sight.  It was a thrill to able to walk on the massive sheets of ice.  Alas,  today's New York Times reports that there are few glaciers left and that all of them will be gone by 2020.

As the U.S.A. prepares for this sad milestone, it's time to think of  a new name for the place.  Perhaps the  federal park system could hold a contest, soliciting ideas from concerned citizens.  To start the ball rolling, here are my entries.

Climate Crash National Park
or

Climate Denial National Monument