As good a definition of art as I've heard

From the winner of the top prize at yesterday's 15th Annual Artists' Soap Box Derby in Kingston, New York:

Mills...added that his sculpture was meant to be funny and political. “It's art, ya know?”

Mills won for his "Gone Postal" car:

a mini postal-delivery truck with strobe lights, a bazooka that shot a “BANG!” flag, and assault rifles that blasted confetti.

Mills said he was inspired by memories of visits to the post office where his father used to work.

"It just seemed like it was an angry place to work..."

Not all the "kinetic sculptures" that rolled in yesterday's event were...um...political:

Kids flexed their creativity, too. Rachel Reimer, 12, and Casey Hall, 10, both of Saugerties, decided to build a poker-themed car with a bathroom twist. They attached two toilet bowls to a wheel barrow, sat on them and played poker while their fathers drove them down the hill. Rachel was dressed up as a queen, and Casey as a jester. “The Royal Flush,” they called it.

Oh, and the toilets were floating on fake clouds. “We're so royal, we just had to be on clouds,” Reimer said.

Read all of Adam Bosch's story at the Times Herald-Record and view the photo gallery by THR's Jeff Goulding.

Comments

[actor212]

Anger is to postal workers as stench is to fishmongers.

[Falstaff]

"An angry place to work." Man, that does sum up Postal Service sites well. I worked in three at various times over the years -- several times as a temporary contract worker and twice as a full employee.

I don't think I've ever met so many angry, unhappy people in one place in my entire life.

It's hard to overstate the pressure most postal workers are under, it seems to me. I've said for many years now that the U.S. postal system is excellent at getting things from one place to another quickly, but very bad -- seriously, very, very bad -- at people.

The article itself brings back pleasant memories of my childhood -- I was a Boy Scout, we did stuff like that. Seems like a simpler time when I think about it, even though I know it wasn't.