{"id":301,"date":"2007-06-06T04:38:20","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T04:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2007-06-08T16:52:54","modified_gmt":"2007-06-08T16:52:54","slug":"graffiti-hell-or-heaven%e2%80%a6you-be-the-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Graffiti Hell or Heaven\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6You be the Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Known for the residence of the original Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell, I was thrilled to be able to go and spend some time there.<a href=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-003.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-003.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-003.thumbnail.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-003.jpg\" alt=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-003.jpg\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAs we arrived in the city early that weekend morning we began to see paintings that had been drawn on sides of buildings, plywood, corner stores, etc.  Normally, one would call this graffiti\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6but this artwork was different.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nIt seems there was a man who believed graffiti drawers had talent <a href=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-021.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-021.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-021.thumbnail.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-021.jpg\" alt=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-021.jpg\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a>that could be channeled in a different direction.  He convinced law enforcement officials to offer those where were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153caught in the act\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to use their talents for designing and maintaining artwork on sides of buildings and other places graffiti usually showed up.  They could do this instead of serving jail time.<\/p>\n<p>Most of them took law enforcement up on the offer.  After a number of<a href=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-022.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-022.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-022.thumbnail.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-022.jpg\" alt=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-022.jpg\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a> years, there were over 1000 places these drawings are displayed around the city\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6so many, in fact, that people drive around the city just to view all the artwork.<\/p>\n<p>Come to think of it, I saw very little graffiti; at least as most of us know it today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My wish for you today<\/strong> is that you enjoy these works of art and consider that when you see what we consider \u00e2\u20ac\u0153graffiti\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in our<a href=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-027.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-027.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-027.thumbnail.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-027.jpg\" alt=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-027.jpg\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a> neighborhoods.  Thank goodness we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the graffiti problem as seriously as Philly, but think of what our buildings COULD look like if we took these budding artists and put their talents to good work like that man of vision did in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n<p>~ Joellen<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-020.jpg\" title=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-020.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-020.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"philadelphia-with-steve-and-halina-on-june-3-2007-020.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Known for the residence of the original Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell, I was thrilled to be able to go and spend some time there. As we arrived in the city early that weekend morning we began to see paintings that had been drawn on sides of buildings, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,27,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-events","category-living-life-to-the-fullest","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}