taxes

At last!  For a few weeks, I've been hoping that the lights would change at just the right moment, and I'd be drawn up more or less alongside one of these perambulating Statues of Liberty.  As I drive down Vermont, I pass two separate branches of Liberty Taxes, who advertise their serves with a number of people dressed up as - well, you get it.  Some of them have placards, which they wave from side to side.  Some have costumes down to the ground; others have jeans emerging from the hemline; others bare legs - and this morning I saw a woman with thick black tights and black shoes, who somehow managed to look like a suffragette.  Some of them just walk up and down with a large flag.  Two, this evening, were dancing to a large boom box.   One certainly notices them ...

And they certainly act as a reminder to get one's tax return materials together - though I'm completely wedded to our accountant in NJ, who is extremely good and whom we have no intention of abandoning.  But - apart from being eye-catching - they are puzzling.  There's the paradox (doubtless particularly puzzling to the Ron Pauls of this world) of "Liberty" paired with "taxes."  There's the appropriation of Lady Liberty by men (men wearing dresses, though); by people of a number of different races; by the short, the tall.  And are they paid to look happy and energetic (for that's what they seem to be performing) - or is it just that there are lots of resting actors in this town?