Clusters of tiny peace-sign stickers scattered in Burlington parks have lifted Celia Cuddy’s spirits. “Stuff is just so hard right now in the community and in the country,” Cuddy said, referring to local struggles with homelessness and drug addiction and what she called the “mean-spiritedne ss” of the Trump administration. When she learned in July of the Peace Justice Center’s sticker scavenger hunt, she and her wife, JB Barna, printed out the clues — written as poems — and started searching. Thirty-three clutches of half-inch-wide, metallic-blue peace signs are hiding in 24 parks.  As of last week, Cuddy and Barna had found 15. “It’s not easy,” Cuddy said, but she’s had fun finding new corners of parks she thought she knew well and discovering one — Potvin Park — she hadn’t heard of at all. Peace Justice Center operations director Kason Hudman created the challenge, patterned after the dérive — based on the French word for “drift” — advocated by the Situationist International, a group of artists, writers and social critics active in Europe in the mid-20th century. The idea of the dérive, Hudman said, was to encourage artists to look at their surroundings in a new way through unstructured rambles.  I could set up a scavenger hunt that would encourage people to go and look around, he remembered thinking. His pilot last summer featured a single sticker at each spot, which proved too difficult. So, he added more stickers, posted a photo of each cluster online and relaunched the Burlington hunt in July. (Find the clues at btvderive.pjcvt.org.) One person has found all 33. “I love having this renewed sense of curiosity about my hometown,” Cuddy said. She has turned some people on to the hunt and prompted others to steer clear of her. “I’ll be studying, like, a lamppost or a grill in a park, and people will walk by, and they’ll just give me a funny look,” she said. “Whenever we find one of these little clusters of stickers, it’s like disproportional happiness,” she said. In the current social and political climate, she said, “it’s really nice to have these little bursts of delight.” The original print version of this article was headlined “FINDING PEACE” The post Burlington Scavenger Hunt Sparks ‘Bursts of Delight’ appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less