If you have a copy of this morning's Times, take a gander at the front page, where you'll see a picture of a picture of outgoing (finally) Mayor Bloomberg., the depicted picture painted by one Jon R. Friedman. The name struck a chord with my wife and me, and a little googling led us to confirm our recollections.
When I first started working as a legal services lawyer I was paid with a CETA grant, at the princely sum of $9,500.00 a year. I worked in New London, but we had a Norwich office as well, where I went quite often. Jon R. Friedman was also working under a CETA grant (proof here), painting murals in Norwich. One of the murals adorned the walls of the legal services waiting room in Norwich, and we got to know Jon fairly well as he worked on it. It was good, but his Norwich masterpiece was the mural that briefly adorned the walls to the entry hall at the Norwich City Hall. Back in those days the Superior Court was in City Hall, with courtrooms scattered throughout the building. Most folks entering to go to court would pass through that hall, and thanks to John, for a while they got a valuable lesson in politics.
I don't remember the precise pictorial subject of the mural, though I do know it suited the Frederick Douglass quote emblazoned thereon:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The mural had a fairly brief shelf life, but I got a kick out of it every time I walked those halls. It is now gathering dust somewhere. Who knows, but Friedman's newfound (to me at least) prominence might retrieve it from oblivion. I wonder if he ever imagined that someday he'd be painting the portraits of arrogant billionairres (besides Bloomberg, he's got Bill Gates on his resume) who are living proof of the truth of Douglass's statement.
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