One of my semi-regular features is to highlight when my local paper, The Columbus Dispatch, has a local, about-town picture of somebody barefooted. Today I have two of them.
Well, sort of.
The first picture, printed yesterday, isn’t local at all. It’s from the Independence Day celebration in Indonesia on Sunday.
There’s fireworks later, right? | Independence Day in Indonesia, its 69th since the end of Dutch rule, gets celebrated with a climbing competition in Jakarta. The poles are greased, but anyone able to get to the top yesterday could claim the prizes placed there.
[Caption by the Dispatch; Photo Credit: Dita Alangkara of the Associated Press.]
I don’t know about you, but if I have somebody standing on my shoulders trying to climb a greased pole, I sure want them to be barefoot.
The second photo, printed today, is quite local.
Up on the roof | Tatiyana Booker, left, and Sierra Alexander, both 14, sit on the porch roof of Tatiyana’s 3rd Street residence enjoying one of their last days of summer break. The girls, who were photographed on Sunday, have their first day of high school at Whetstone on Wednesday.
[Caption by the Dispatch; Photo Credit: Jenna Watson of the Dispatch.]
The AP photo of Panjat Pinang (the Indonesian pole climbing event) has been in newspapers around the world.
You can also find many videos of it, for example:
The second photo would have a totally different meaning if it was taken in another context, for example during a flood when people have to flee on their roofs ….