Big Pig Gig: Do Re Wee!

Friday
Laura and I went down to the airport around lunchtime to meet Jen flying in from Houston for the weekend to spend a last weekend with her "little" sister before Laura leaves for Macedonia with the Peace Corps in the middle of September. The three of us then went for lunch at a crepe place quite close to the airport, on Buttermilk Pike. Then we went downtown to show Jen Smale Riverfront Park at the new Banks development. Since the last time we were there these pigs have appeared, part of the Big Pig Gig. This is a reprise of the 2000 event, and features around "100 swine hogging the streets of Cincinnati"! The event is a production of ArtWorks in partnership with C-Change, a year-long leadership-development program for emerging leaders in the Cincinnati USA region. Art Works Cincinnati is "an award-winning non-profit that empowers and inspires the creative community to transform our everyday environments through employment, apprenticeships, education, community partnerships, and civic engagement". The relevance of pigs is that between the late 1820's and mid 1830s, Cincinnati's easy access to river transport and farmland facilitated the city's development as the United States' chief pork processing center. These pigs are called "Suspension Pigs" and celebrate the various city bridges crossing the Ohio, in particular the Roebling Suspension Bridge, seen in the background. John A. Roebling, used the Cincinnati bridge as his prototype when he later built the longer and more famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Besides adding their beauty to the photo, Jen and Laura were strategically placed to hide the on-going work and development of the park in the background! We walked around the park and then over to the Great American Ball Park, as I wanted to find another Art for All installation - and we found several more pigs over there! We also narrowly missed getting a picture of the girls with Mr. Redlegs, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team mascot! Just as we headed over towards him, he disappeared inside the building. After a while he reappeared to pose with a wedding party - a different take on wedding photographs! By this time, we'd had enough of the heat (low 90s!) and headed back home for a nice cold drink.