OY/YO is Deborah Kass’s tribute to Brooklyn’s cultural landscape. This sunny yellow sculpture greets city visitors, exclaiming “yo,” a familiar greeting, or “oy,” an exclamation of frustration, depending upon one’s point of view. Both words are baked into Brooklyn’s shared Black, Italian and Jewish vocabulary.

These days, politics daily roils my psyche and then causes me to exclaim Oy! in frustration. Yesterday, was particularly bad. At first, I was overjoyed, seeing the market’s upturn and knowing that the orange turd had caved, but later it sank in that maybe it was not as much good news as I first interpreted. Maybe with all of their shenanigans they had actually wrecked the economy or maybe this was just another one of his grifts. Either way these thoughts soured the rest of my day.

This week, we actually had an election. It was only for municipal matters, but Anne still worked the polls. I saw her there, when I voted. She later told me that one man had come into the polls and loudly exclaimed that he wanted to vote that sucker out or something to that effect. Anne intervened and explained to the man that the orange turd was not on the ballot or something to that effect. I guess that these days I am not alone in my frustration… Yo! Yo! Yo! Oy vey!