26 April 2010: A Slice Of Americana

Fountain? Bidet? Nothing like a functional lawn art. This is a sight we saw in Connecticut and I had to turn around to go take a picture of it.

23 January 2009 Photo: The Green Monster

I was in Boston for a couple days this week and to stay with my "as American as apple pie" theme and the Chevy song from the January 21st post, I decided to highlight baseball. Now I could have found a Red Sox sign or the outside of Fenway but I decided to go with an icon that has been known to Bostonians and anyone who has watched a game in person or on TV at Fenway - The Citgo Sign.

This sign has been part of the urban landscape since 1965. When it was threatened to be demolished, like their Tea Party forefathers, Bostonians protested and succeeded! Today the sign still shines in the Kenmore Square area and I feel badly for anyone who ever makes the decision to try to take it down in the future.

21 January 2009 Photo: As American As Apple Pie

Ok so this picture is neither pie nor real apples but you get the gist. Today was my first day out on the road for work. As I was getting ready to leave my house at 6am to trek 5 hours in a car to have a meeting, I quickly took this picture just in case I didn't have time the rest of the day to get a "patriotic" picture. Who thought of this patriotic theme week anyway?

Anyway, I tried to convince my friends to pose for a patriotic photo but no luck so hence the apples in my kitchen. Here is some interesting wikipedia "facts".

Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the discovery of America, "as American as apple pie" is a common saying in the United States, meaning "typically American". The dish was also commemorated in the phrase "for Mom and apple pie" - supposedly the stock answer of American soldiers in WWII, whenever journalists asked why they were going to war.

Advertisers exploited the patriotic connection in the 1970s with the TV jingle "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet". There are claims that the Apple Marketing Board of New York State used such slogans as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" and "as American as apple pie!", and thus "was able to successfully 'rehabilitate' the apple as a popular comestible" in the early twentieth century when prohibition outlawed the production of cider.

Leave it to the ingenuity of those New Yorkers to find a way to keep making money even when they were not drunk on cider! And apparently our love for Chevy has stuck around according to this updated version of the commercial from the 70's but now tauts stolen bases, goat cheese pizza, bottled water along with the Chevrolet