A while back in an effort to integrate art with highway engineering certain images were to be placed on portions of a new expressway being built here.
If you have ever been to Scotsdale you know this can be a pretty neat idea.
One such image was "Windy Man" which was sort of an homage to the endless resource of wind that we have here on the South Plains.
http://www.dot.state.tx.us/LBB/projects/phases.htm
It offended some residents who said it was a pagan god. A sledgehammer destroyed it before the road was finished.
Someone vandalized it and the word on the streets is it was religious folks. I suspect drunk teens. (in the back of my mind I can hear my mom's voice from long ago when she was raising four boys who broke stuff daily..."We just can't have nice things!" )
I thought of it today when I was reading about a man who bought a Kokopelli tshirt in New Mexico and was told that the flute playing skinny man taken from Navaho rock paintings is a pagan god of fertility. And to wear it was to promote false gods.
That reminded me of a charismatic preacher who once told me that until I removed the Southwest style imagery from my house I was inviting demons.
This same preacher insisted that a couple who named their daughter Stormy should change the name immediately so as not to curse the child further.
I was just wondering what 'yall' say about the power of pagan imagery. I suppose this discussion should even go so far as to ask if you are wearing an Irish Tshirt with a four leaf clover are you promoting "luck" ?