Every year I see those "hanged" decorations and wonder, how many passers-by lost someone to the rope at some point in the family's collective memory, and how does it feel to see a decoration like that? I know I always think of my friend Cindy's little brother Dirk, whose rope drop was said to be about sexuality.... kid was, like, 10 years old. I think of Cindy, seeing porches that have been dressed up all-too-realistically.

Then it's also struck me as quite obvious why one would not tend to see that "hanged" thing on display in black neighborhoods, nohow, neither.

And now, this.

~S~