The Latest From Alan Chin: Allentown, PA.

It would be a far less compelling photo in color. As I was looking at this and thinking of the recently summary of polling [52-40 Obama] it occurred to me that perhaps it takes an economic depression to confront one’s gaze and move the focus from what is unimportant and ephemeral [skin color, or ethnicity whatever the "race" problem in many Americans is] to what is real. When “times are good” one can afford to make the immaterial significant. Good [the permanent damage electing Obama as president will do to the lie of race and racism] will come of bad [the suffering the depression will bring] but in a way it is the wages the U.S. of 2008 must pay for the sins of 1789 and abandoning reconstruction. Everything gets paid for in the end.

I see patterns of opposition in the right-hand side of the photo: vehicles parked facing each other, headed in opposite directions, and the facade of the building with vertical and horizontal emphases. Yet the sense of getting to work for your candidates is clearly evident from the single person in his determined stride.

Allentown – billy joel
Not my favorite video, nevertheless. . .
Here’s another version that works pretty well until the end. . . Allentown/Pittburgh
In today’s vernacular, we are all living in Allentown. . .

At first glance I thought that this was a photo of Joe Biden. I was trying to figure out why he was putting down lawn signs in Allentown, but even knowing that it isn’t him, somehow it still doesn’t seem like a stretch that Biden would be out there doing this kind of work.

is alan chin going to photograph the glorious inaugural in black & white too?

idle automobiles and solid concrete/asphalt everywhere; the paradox of the parking lot being that in all this space there is no place left for this man to plant his message. Not unlike Diogenes, the Cynic ~ he carries his beacon-light of HOPE through this hardened landscape, seeking a righteous man: “Believing that virtue was better revealed in action and not theory, his life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society.”

Aw, my Ma’s hometown.

. . . he just took it off someone’s porch . . . stole it. He supports the Geezer/Dingbat ticket.

Appolgies to any previous posters for whom I have caused offence. Whether it is in reference to their sentiments, or the prose that they have used to convey them. But here is a slightly different take on the established narrative. For this picture and several others: at the moment&of the present.
Here is a man removing a pro-Obama flag; rather than being in the process of planting one. I dont really know what a ‘lawn flag’ is: each country has its own efficace industry that thrives around the production of political representation. Flags, bunting, labelled water: hives of activity.
If I was going to plant a flag, in a lawn, in October. Would like it to be seen- witnessed – by others: I would like it to have two prongs. Firmly rooted in the ground.
That may be a plea for bi-partisanship: across the aisles. Or it may be a plea for flapping in the wind.
But can we discern from this photo whether it is someone in the process of supporting an electoral process or stealing the spoils of semi-assured victory?
How exactly half full is that glass-process of Democratic registration in Florida going?
Et al/et anul
Personally; I simply do know at the moment. That scares me. It urges me to believe that the next few days are ones in which rigour of sentiment, emotion& technological intellects should be applied equally across boards
That would be one in which self-doubts equally are marginalised/regionalised to the outside of the ‘told-u-so.
Images like this, should remind of the inherent dangers of the cake-walk, park-lot complacency!
Even if I say so myself!

Martin, if you were in the US, you could drop into a volunteer office and assemble the yard signs. They are comprised of a metal wicket (and yes, it has two legs), with a plastic (think our ubiquitous American shopping bags, currently being phased out) “slipcover” drawn over the frame. As far as placement, many communities frown on putting them in “public” spaces until the day of the election. Even then, there are rules and regulations about where they may be placed. After polls close, volunteers pick up to signs, and the frames will be reused in future elections

Ahh. Mr books alive. you have saved me from the stickyness of the wicket formerly known as croquet. An ucompromising hoopla. In of its self. first through the posts& all that buzz: post lite-year stuff. What do u know, sir. Back to the pre Mcibbaw garden.Peep; peep. thankyou. electronically tested pull-overs&all that. recycled. Marvellous idea

Thank you for your gaze and forum.

Alice in Wonderland for the McCain October Surprise?

Martin, I’d like to understand your point, but I fail again.
However your “Peep; peep. thankyou.” ~ suggested ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6yJN8O9e_Q&feature=related

regarding:
“But can we discern from this photo whether it is someone in the process of supporting an electoral process or stealing the spoils of semi-assured victory?”
let me make clear, as the BAG has noted accurately in the text, that this IS an Obama campaign volunteer. Specifically, a union member whose job that day was to drive canvassers to different neighborhoods in order to sway undecided voters. At the end of that effort, he was taking a sign either home or to plant somewhere.
So he was definitely part of the electoral process and NOT stealing a campaign sign.