An American Manif?

I woke up this morning with a crazy idea (this happens) and said "I just have to do this. For Art!"

And I mean Art Buchwald.

After seeing that CNN interview and writing the post for the blog yesterday, I knew I had to do something else. This will probably be his last Thanksgiving.

So my wild idea was to gather a huge crowd (hundreds -- thousands?) of humans - expats, French, whatever --to spell out

"merci, Art!"

in some obvious Parisian place and have it photographed or videoed and sent to or broadcast for him for Thanksgiving.

He has done so much to help Americans think of the French at Thanksgiving, with his tale of Le Jour de Merci Donnant and his many years in Paris with the International Herald Tribune, the "only newspaper he ever loved."

So mostly I need to find someone who has done large-space spelling so that we could do this and have people line up to spell the phrase, plus some coordinators for crowd & artistic management. I think that with blog power and other (lots of expat orgnaizations) we could gather a huge crowd -- for example on Sunday afternoon.

And someone to help deal with the tangle of Prefecture de Police regulations, which could be the biggest wet blanket of all unless someone has a piston. OK, in my really wildest dreams maybe Yann Arthur-Bertrand (Paris Vu du Ciel) would photograph it! I've cold-contacted a few sources, so we'll have to see what pans out, if anything.

I hope this can move forward; it'll be too late next year (unless Art pulls a great stunt!). Any thoughts and ideas and contacts are welcome.