As I made my way through the new snow in Northside on this extraordinarily cold day, I listened to a podcast about the recently freed Aung San Suu Kyi, who’s seeking a return to politics in Burma after some 15 years in political detention.
Her passion moved me.
As I crossed Hamilton Avenue at the pedestrian crosswalk in front of Northside Tavern, a truck sped up when he saw I would do the unthinkable and actually use that pedestrian crosswalk with traffic speeding past. He opened his window, shouting meaningless obscenities.
I’m a bit of a militant pedestrian, I know that I do in fact have the right-of-way, so I kept walking. He stopped, though in reality he would have had to have stopped in another fifteen feet regardless, there was another car ahead. I smiled at him, somehow drawing power from Aung San Suu Kyi. I felt her passion.
Onward towards Take the Cake for lunch. As I crossed Blue Rock Ave, I looked up and realized Northside is blessed with two Shepard Fairey murals, and one features Aung San Suu Kyi, and that Aung San Suu Kyi mural was right in front of me. This made me smile.
I took a picture. It made me smile.
Shepard Fairey mural, Northside, Cincinnati, OH featuring Aung San Suu Kyi
After a Take the Cake lunch, I walked back past the mural, turned around and looked again, and thought about how Aung San Suu Kyi, even after fifteen years of political detention under an oppressive regime, had such positive passion about her life and those all around her. She saw change as inevitable and still possible and still happening despite the negative political forces still all around her. I smiled again.
Again crossing Blue Rock, I noticed some Northsiders playing in the snow. With tools. They’d tapped into their passion. They’d built a fantastic snow unicorn at the edge of Hoffner Park along Hamilton. I took a picture. And it made me smile.
Snow Unicorn, Hoffner Park, Northside, Cincinnati, OH
The snow builders then eagerly showed me their other creation, a snowman, a snowman who had been taken down by snow sharks. I took a picture.
The snowman that had been consumed by the snow sharks: (look closely)
Passion. This made me smile.
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