Driving through Missoula, you no doubt have noticed a tribute to life, liberty and perhaps, the pursuit of happiness. Because in many, mostly western small towns, with citizens perhaps insecure that travelers might not find the city, there is painted on a cliff, mountain, or water tower a large, square serif letter that usually represents the town's name. Missoula is blessed with three examples of this particular brand of public typography. There's a giant L on Mount Jumbo, an M on Mount Sentinel, and an S on a hill above a popular restaurant. Missoula used to have a peace sign. But it was removed. However, in another example of the pursuit of happiness, someone painted peace signs on the top of a downtown Missoula building. Peace lives. Letters to the editor of the Missoulian newspaper generally condemned this act of graffiti. By the way, the original peace sign was created by an English graphic artist, Gerald Holtom in 1958. The symbol comes from the combination of two semaphore letters, N and D, with N standing for nuclear and D for disarmament. Peace signs, Ls, Ms, and Ss are, in a broad definition, examples of graffiti. Graffiti is usually and simply defined as a drawing or inscription made on a public wall or space. At Jerry Johnson hot springs, for example, you can find nearly every letter in the alphabet carved into surrounding tree trunks.

Since before time was recorded, people have felt a need to express themselves with words and images on public places. Nomadic cave dwellers produced aesthetically pleasing references to animals, spirits, and themselves. Frustrated Egyptian pyramid workers scribbled on their work areas that Cleopatra drank too much wine. GIs during World War II made chalk drawings on tanks. Catholic and Protestant protesters painted slogans on Belfast, Northern Ireland walls. Graffiti artists cover walls and street signs in urban areas throughout the world that inspire public wrath, severe penalties, and hip-hop graphic design artists. Wall space, signs, and railroad cars in many cities often are coated with multicolored spray-painted messages that are curiously universal in their graphic style. Termed folk art, vandalism, graffiti, or tagging, depending on your point of view, these visual messages actually are a complex written form of symbolic communication. Graffiti may mark the border of a gang's territory, plea for understanding and hope for the future, express grief for a killed loved one, vent anger toward an enemy, demonstrate playfulness and humor, be acts of criminal vandalism, signify a person's existence, note the name of a small town, or act as a form of advertising for a private high school.

Community leaders and owners of high walls say they are against those who express themselves with a spray can because their messages degrade the urban environment and no doubt lower their property values. But in another context-public works murals, galleries, and so on-such messages are valued as fine art. Why is one context more accepted than another? Take advertising billboards, for example. For some, I suppose, they are tolerated because they offer persuasive information packaged with colorful images. For others, billboards are a form of graffiti that is distracting and annoying. It all depends on your perspective. For some, peace, L, M, and S signs represent community activism and pride. For others, they are unnecessary additions to an otherwise scenic valley.

The L was recently in the news because those responsible for it were tired of it being vandalized. Merry pranksters, political activists, and others dared to move the individual rocks that made up the L to create peace signs, first names, and other messages on the Jumbo hillside. These graphic alterations to the graffito on the mountain required troops of persons to reposition the rocks back into the L shape. So, a helicopter dropped a bunch of cement and concerned graffiti artists set the stones in stone, more permanently preserving the first initial of a private, religious-based high school. But maybe those that didn't go to this high school would rather see an unspoiled landscape and consider the large L in the same way as other types of annoying graffiti. Just goes to show, one person's treasured symbol can be another person's graffito.

So here's a suggestion: On this anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, let's engage in a public example of the pursuit of happiness. Find a tree branch that has fallen to the ground-that shouldn't be too hard-take it up with you to Mount Jumbo and place it over the white cement L. If enough of us do it, the L will be covered, at least for a while. Then, sit and watch the many fireworks displays around town and enjoy the thought that those on the ground can look up without being annoyed by mountainside graffiti. That's what I call a happiness pursuit.

writings