Orange Crates and Controversy

Several days ago Kevin Levin featured the artwork of Ben Sakoguchi on Civil War Memory.  He shared several of his favorite examples of Sakoguchi’s work.

Intrigued, I went to Sakoguchi’s website, and I found some images I liked, too.  But it dawned on me that Kevin and I might have different tastes … and that my tastes just might be somewhat more edgy and somewhat more controversial.  Here are some of my favorites:

You can imagine who I was thinking about when I selected the last one.

This led me to do some thinking.  Kevin’s selections reproduced on his blog were charmingly mainstream.  Oh, sure, there’s John Brown on one, and Nathan Bedford Forrest (with references to Fort Pillow and the KKK) on another, but that’s old hat, folks.  Only the curious (like me) would have done much more looking into these images.  Now, perhaps Kevin’s sneaky and subtle, although only one of these traits is associated with people from South Jersey.  Me?  I’m just honoring my New York heritage.  Yet it’s Kevin who gets under some people’s skin in a way I can never hope to do (with one glaring exception … after all, Florida grows oranges, too).

Damn that Kevin Levin.