lead, stick figures, and a bagel or two

The Fundred Dollar Bill Project hopes to clean up lead contamination in New Orleans. At the time I wrote this story, soil-based lead was the city's primary toxic waste concern. Of course, thanks to offshore drilling (and, by default, my commute to work), that is no longer the case.

Want to design your own fundred? The art advocacy project has only collected 10.6% of its goal, and could certainly benefit from a few more bills.

A few fundred ideas:

Stick figures. For those, like Brian Banks, who declared himself to be a "stick figures kind of guy." Banks is an academic advisor at the University of Michigan’s School of Art & Design. He's been working there for awhile, so he's not too concerned about the discrepancy.

Portraits. One student at the School of Art and Design drew a fundred in honor of Banks, entitled "The Fundred Man." (Banks orchestrated the Ann Arbor fundred pick up, which included both the university and area schools.) Banks showed me the drawing, confessing that he thought the ears and neck were too big. "That looks like Will Smith!" he said, proving that artistic talent does not necessarily a critic make.

Peace signs. They are still as popular as they were during my tenure in elementary school. Overall, though, the fifth grade class I visited while working on this story was ambivalent about the project's success. One ten-year-old told me he was pretty pessimistic about the whole affair--the government, the environment, collective responsbility. He also told me that "lead is a metal and comes in three different forms."

Coincidentally, it was "wacky hair day" at Thurston Elementary. One girl was wearing bagels at the base of her pigtails. When I saw her at lunchtime, one bagel was missing. "It fell on the floor," she said. "I didn't eat it."