Tiny Buddhas make me warm all over

I submit to you that this morning’s front page story about an art hoax in Colfax involving tiny Buddha’s head statues found floating in the American River, first mentioned here by SinghCity yesterday, is one of the finest encapsulations of the spirit of Sacramento. Go read it, it’s rewarding.

There is that particular feeling you get about Sacramento–the propensity to drive into buildings, the mobbing at local openings of giant chain stores, the tendency to seem incapable of maintaining the species that gives you pause, and yet you can’t quite articulate it in a full sentence. I believe (this theory is actually my wife’s, but I subscribe to it whole-heartedly) that it can be attributed to the theory that Sacramento is still a gold mining outpost, a lawless frontier fort, with all the paranoid grasping at civilization that you imagine the original ’49ers embodied. This story is a good example.

The details are remarkable: his first visit was to a t-shirt store? He began selling them before researching whether they were worth anything? (great snark by Bee writer Blair Anthony Robertson there, by the way–“and the order of this is important”) The discoverer just happens to have warrants out? That’s just too much. I don’t know if I’m the first person to say this about a local news story or not, but they oughtta make this into a movie.

However, I’d like to add one question to the mix, the one question that I feel is left unanswered. Isn’t dumping hundreds of objects into the river that don’t belong in the river considered littering? Oh, he did it to teach a lesson. Well, I have an important lesson about Snickers wrappers to teach, could I go ahead and dump about 800 of them in Folsom lake?

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Author: CoolDMZ

"X-ray vision to see in between / Where's my kimono and my time machine?"

One thought on “Tiny Buddhas make me warm all over”

  1. Might I suggest first reading the article from cbs13.com originally mentioned in SinghCity’s post from March 03, 2006.

    http://www.cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_055094902.html

    It really helps with the wonderful details of this story.

    “I don’t want to go to jail,” prospector Henry told CBS 13, “I don’t know what I did wrong. So I’ve been hiding.”

    Another fun fact you may not have known:

    “According to the law, if you find a gold nugget in the American River, you can keep it. But if you find a historical artifact and keep it, you could be charged with defrauding the government.”

    I think Mrs. CoolDMZ is really on to something.

    Like

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