Wisconsin Neighborhood Needs To GET A LIFE

BluebirdEXCERPTS:

Al Emmons of Greendale, Wis., has been displaying the statue on his home’s chimney located at Bluebird Court.


However, neighbors complained that the bird diminished the historic integrity of the community and went to officials to get Emmons to remove the statue.


"It’s just an unhealthy obsession," Emmons said. "It’s such a silly thing to get upset about. That’s also what the big to-do is, is that everyone is wondering why would they get so upset about having a blue bird on a guy’s chimney that the kids made."


The Village’s Historic Preservation Board ordered Emmons to take the blue Big Bird off the chimney or face a $100 a day fine.

GET THE STORY.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

7 thoughts on “Wisconsin Neighborhood Needs To GET A LIFE”

  1. Meh. They have purple houses in Ohio (as I discovered on my campus visit to Steubenville), what’s so bad about the bird? Tacky and ugly perhaps, but not purple and not the entire house.

  3. Axioms of Power
    Power corrupts.
    Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
    But perry power corrupts all out of proportion to actual power.
    This is not the first time I’ve seen this sort of behavior from local historic preservation boards.
    –arthur

  4. This is the suburb that I grew up in. The “originals” are pretty special, but I simply do not find this all that offensive.
    To maintain the originals as they were built would be row houses of PLAIN white stucco with absolutely no character. Many families have changed the exteriors a bit to give more distinction and character; this bird is just a bit more than has been seen in the past.

  5. I grew up in a neighboring suburb to Greendale (and now, coincidentally in light of one of the above comments, live in Steubenville). What I find offensive is that everyone knows that Big Bird is yellow, dammit!

  6. Like a couple of other readers, I know Greendale. For the benefit of other readers, this community is a suburb and is surrounded by suburbs of Milwaukee. Oddly enough they also protested a Best Buy going in over concerns about the effects on the neighborhood.

  7. So is “local historic preservation boards” the phrasing that people outside of California use for what we call homeowners associations (or HOA’s) because that’s exactly what the bored elected people in my neighborhood would do. We’ve got all kinds of fun rules (CC&R’s):
    -Garbage cans can not be left out more than 24 hours. (that’s a fine for you!)
    -No more than one political sign can be in your yard/windows. (and a fine for you!)
    -Cars can not be parked on the street for more than 48 hours. (and a BIG fine for you too!)
    -All house colors must be approved by the board. (and a daily fine for you until you re-paint!)
    -etc. ad nauseam.

Comments are closed.