Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.04.11
Dear friends,
A nice thing about moving to a new place (and I have found many, many nice things since moving to Portland almost a year ago) is learning about things that everyone already knew about said place, like the LoveJoy Columns.
"Buffing" is term for painting over street art to erase it—either to get rid of it, or to make a clean canvas for the next artist. ("Buffin" is 'A coarse cloth in use in the time of Elizabeth and James I.') Some places actually allow government contractors to enter private property to remove graffiti they think may have been illegally painted. Matthieu Martin, a French artist, takes photographs of buffed walls that are oddly moving.
Erasing brings out strong opinions and makes for cooler blazons. And sometimes what was erased is more interesting to the future than what you wrote over it. If you really want to erase something, you might consider zeroisation.
The best erasure is this one [video link]. The worst erasure, of course, is that of people.
Stay well, stay safe, stay visible—
Your friend,
Erin