Curb Your Dog Signs – Signs of the Beautiful

 

We care about the public space between our building and the street curb. So our co-op plants flowerbeds, maintains tree guards, and posts Curb Your Dog Signs. We clean the sidewalks around the building constantly. I support this!

Let me offer what I learned about decorating as an inner-city teacher. I realized that in public spaces, decorating and vandalism are on opposite sides of the same coin. Decorators and vandals both seek ownership. As a teacher, I saw that they both use the same subliminal language. As I learned to use that language, negative behaviors lessened and encouraged an environment that supported the children’s human spirit. It worked!

Behaviors our co-op faces are vandalism, too, but mindless vandalism. Coffee cups and candy wrappers litter in front of our building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Spit-out wads of gum become sidewalk polka dots. Urinating dogs choke trees and kill flowers. Cigarette butts, some of the most ecologically dangerous debris, proliferate.

 

 

Analyzing How People “Read” Curb Your Dog Signs

To do my part, I thought of using signs but realized why they often don’t work.

• One is that our minds subconsciously do not see negatives. They see the words “Don’t Litter” as “Please Litter.” They see the universal “No” sign – the red circle enclosing a slanted red line – to say “Go Ahead.”
• A second reason signs often don’t work is that the same verbiage is everywhere. Our brains process ten million pieces of information a second. When they see the thousandth “Curb Your Dog” sign, they see “same-o’-same-o’” and shift into cognitive override. They go blank.
• “Curb Your Dog” signs are often also ugly, especially the super big ones. They shout and drive everyone’s attention elsewhere. In a beautiful flower garden, why display a sign that’s bigger than the flowers?

Examples of Signs Made to Overcome Perceptual and Aesthetic Problems

Understanding the Language of Decorating

So, the signs I made call attention to the vandalism gently and kindly and focus as well on the ecological benefits of the city’s tree beds and uplift the spirit of each passerby. My sign project has reduced dog waste and litter. We are still dealing with too many gum wads and cigarette butts, however. So I still look for more ways to communicate with our mindless vandals.

Here is some grammar I have learned so far:

• Barriers may be physically ineffective, but they are a form of language. In the South Bronx school, I was asked to cover my creative work with ugly plastic. I refused. The plastic could not protect the bulletin board from a razor blade, and it said “don’t” or “I am afraid.” 
• In New York City,  the new, higher tree guards near the building worked. They were a few inches taller than the former ones, but dog owners subliminally read the language. For those waiting for metal guards, any barrier, like sticks and string, help to protect the tree.
• We always buy extra supplies because we know things will be stolen. Still, even though we lose a few flowers every season, no one has stolen my frames. A stolen plant not replaced quickly leads to exponential pilfering. It gives others permission to take the plants.
• The most important language is immediate repair, which sends a message to the vandal that the area is claimed. 
• If the same sign is used for five years or if hundreds of the same sayings appear in nearby, a cognitive override takes place. The trick to claiming public space is to change the verbiage at least once a year and to minimize repetitions in the neighborhood.

 

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Understanding Vandalism with Compassion

We all need to be reminded to look at negative behaviors with compassion. Vandalism in the inner city is an expression of deep fears and worries about people’s environment. Before we lecture the smoker or chastise the dog walker, we can realize we all suffer a culture that separates spirit from matter, the sacred from the profane, and treating public and private space differently. Until we understand that public spaces are our home, we can use subliminal language to allow for the beautiful to enrich our lives.

 

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There are two parts to this website, The Lessons in my book, which are more difficult in concept, and the blogs, which are lighter in nature. Blogs that you might enjoy with the same theme as Curb Your Dog Signs – Signs of the Beautiful are:

• Signs of the Beautiful – Celebrating Hope – signs with the theme of hope
• Beauty Heals in Troubled Times – Signs of the Beautiful – signs with the theme of dark and light
• Making ‘Curb Your Dog’ Signs’ – Signs of the Beautiful– how to create your own signs
• When We Do Not See – An Invisible Line in the Sand – an essay on the ecological damage of cigarette butts, why we don’t see them and what we can do about it

One Lesson that relate to this blog is:

• Why People Can’t See, Lesson VI, Part A

Please note that my website allows you to leave comments at the end of the blogs but not at the end of each lesson. If you have a comment or question about a lesson, you may email me at ruta@rutas-rules.com

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Also consider:

Why You Shouldn’t Let Your Dog Pee on Tree