Please Mister Postman

Feed me

Back in the day, writing longhand with a fountain pen was as commonplace as using thumbs on a smartphone today. The Sheaffer Snorkel pen I used was a top of the line instrument, kind of like today's iPhone 11Pro Max. But unlike today's smarter than ever phones which no one leaves home without, the Sheaffer is reserved exclusively for affixing my signature to official documents, and most importantly for from the heart personal missives. Those epistles employ the power of the pen to convey more feeling and warmth than that of text or email.  They also demand transmission broadband can't offer. So who does one entrust to handle such sensitive delivery? Who will trudge carrying satchels of letters through snow, sleet, rain, heat, and frigid temps to reach your door? Who? .... the uniformed men and women letter carriers of the USPS, that's who! 

Wait Mister Postman, look and see

Is there a letter in your bag, a letter for me

Why's it been a very long time, since I heard ....

There must be some word today

Please Mister Postman, look and see

Is there a letter in your bag for me?*

Announcing a very special life cycle event

 Alas, if 'Mister Postman' didn't have enough obstacles to 'deliver de letter de sooner de better', his/her job now faces a new non-weather related speed bump - the devious designs of a Not Too Dynamic Duo, POTUS 45 and recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Consider - Mr. DeJoy, a major donor to POTUS's election campaign, is the first postmaster not to have risen through the ranks of the USPS. Despite not getting up to speed on operations, or the Constitutional mission of his new agency, one of his initial directives was decommissioning sorting machines and removing blue collection boxes from our streets. That was prior to appearing on Capitol Hill and admitting to a congressional panel he didn't know the price of a postcard stamp.

Here today

Gone tomorrow

For his part the 45th president continues harassing the USPS labelling it a loser 'business', rather than a former cabinet level federal agency and the public utility it truly is. POTUS remains laser focused on a mission to disparage the service and block funding. 

There's a lot for sale on this bulletin board, but not US Mail. It is priceless

And what's the objective of this campaign? - delays in service.

All this during an out of control pandemic when three quarters of US registered voters are eligible to safely vote by mail in the most critical election of our time. Why? Because POTUS fears the anticipated surge of ballots can cost him a second term. He'll employ every tool at a president's disposal to block and tarnish the service our respected mail system delivers. 

Voting is the oxygen of representative government! If these blatant interferences in 2020 voting aren't obstruction of democracy, what is?

Bottom line: Support the USPS and VOTE - apply for a vote by mail ballot if you choose not to go to your local polling place, then use your voice to express your from the heart personal missive and VOTE. 

    After the election, buy more stamps and write more letters. Those you touch this way, and you, will feel the power of the connection and feel good about it.

deliver de letter de sooner de better

Rural delivery, is it at risk?

****************************************************

* lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

1961 song by The Marvelettes

 images © David Greenfield

Special thanks to my friend Rick Karash, a master of drone photography, for contributing his photo editing skills to the 'Here today, Gone tomorrow' pair of images. 

Visit my web site anytime to view other Galleries, Photo-essays, and read previous blog-posts, then kindly share on social media. Thank you.

Punch, Counterpunch

Breakthrough

Inspiration for this post is drawn primarily from Power Places, a portfolio by photographer John Phafl. His study presents the natural landscape as a theater set populated with images depicting insatiable demands for energy generated by our planet's burgeoning population. Power Places portends a collision course - stunning landscapes shrouded by the advancing cavernous maw of an energy Goliath.

During daily walks I too find examples of society's energy needs intruding into the environment, but I also discover images demonstrating nature's counterpunch to the intrusions. The existential question is whether a tipping point will be reached when intrusion and consequent abuse of the environment overwhelms what an increasingly stressed natural world can reclaim, refresh, and renew.

Punch

Hand of Man

Energy is Man's Oxygen

Concrete Crypt

Electricity

Stake in the Heart

Mechanized Brigade

Coexistence

'Natural' Gas

Walled-in

Controlling the Spigot

Plastic!

A Once Luscious Landscape

Boa Constrictor

Counterpunch

Partial Solution

Breakthrough

"I Speak for the Trees"

Creeping Back

Breakout!

Nature's Inexorable Counter Intervention

Hope

Rising Above

In Harmony?

and that remains the existential question.

 images © David Greenfield

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Real messaging from the Zone

Surreal New World

With all due respect to Rod Serling, host of that eery 1950s-ish TV series the Twilight Zone, consider the following imagined intro for a 2020 episode, delivered of course in Mr. Serling's unmistakable gravelly voice ...

'You are about to enter another dimension. It is the middleground of light and shadow, between science and superstition. You will encounter an enemy lurking there, a pathogen beyond that known to man, living between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. It is an enemy as daunting as travel to the boundary of space and as timeless as infinity. Conquering it will stretch the tensile strength of imagination and resources. You've just crossed into ... the Corona Zone.'

The Twilight Zone ran on CBS for five years keeping viewers gathered around B&W rabbit-eared TV sets perched on the edges of their seats.  Each story involved people crossing into the Zone to face unusual or extraordinary circumstances.  The storylines had a bad dream-like feel.  Might that define the surreal storyline of the world we suddenly plunged into?  Each episode ended with a surprise twist, usually with a morality message.  Could there be a take-away message for us now?

First, let's step back to examine Surrealism.  It is not a new concept, and its scope encompasses far more than Salvador Dali's wilted clocks in The Persistence of Memory.  Surrealism was a twentieth century movement expressed popularly through painting and literature, but photography too played an important role.  Artists used techniques like double exposure, camera rotation, lens distortions, montage, and solarization to create bizarre, compelling images.  Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of street photography and the decisive moment image, embraced Surrealism during one phase of his illustrious career, training his eyes to capture micro-seconds of the surreal he observed all around him.  Regardless of medium, all iconic artists of the movement employed a genius for turning something whether ordinary, ugly, or repulsive into compelling creations. 

© Henri Cartier-Bresson

What's for Dinner? © David Greenfield

Watchful Eyes in the Mens Room © David Greenfield

Now back to the question of whether today's surrealistic Corona-time could yield a compelling message.

There are certainly mixed messages out there. Here's but one example - pre-Corona I shunned environment choking-single use-plastic bags always making sure to do the responsible, right thing by carrying reusable bags to every grocery shopping excursion.  In Corona-time plastic has re-emerged as the safest go-to bagging option.  Markets provide a seemingly endless supply while my cache of reusables rests in an extreme socially distant corner waiting to be sequestered with the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain Waste Repository.  I'm inundated with leftover plastic that groceries no longer accept for recycling!

Plastic - soon headed to a landfill near you?

There are other mixed bag messages like the indisputable need for screens to maintain social connections and avoid isolation vs. the growing prospect of normalized societal isolation living one's life by screen alone.  But there is one Corona-time message that is unambiguous.  It's a take-away which should continue to percolate well after the curve has flattened and headed back to baseline - it's who our true heroes are!

Forget the adulation heaped on professional athletes for the entertainment they provide while receiving megabuck salaries.  Where would we be today without a frontline army of doctors, nurses, EMTs, ambulance drivers, grocery store workers, farmers & their hired hands, and bus & subway drivers?  These troops have been in the trenches 24/7 from Day One at great risk to themselves and their families.  And as parents struggle to create meaningful teaching experiences for their sheltered-at-home kids, how about a fresh appreciation for teachers.  By the way, this gallant workforce, The Essentials, is not comprised of One Percenters. They're largely people of color and members of our worker-bee immigrant community. They are the true heroes.  It is they who make America great!

And that is real messaging from the Corona-Zone to take to heart. 

World Turned Upside Down

 images © David Greenfield

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Hair

Give me 'down to there' hair,

shoulder length or longer.

Straight, curly, fuzzy,

snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty,

oily, greasy, fleecy,

shining, gleaming, streaming,

flaxen, waxen

I'm just a hairy guy

Is hairy-ness a new fad?
The answer is .... NO, all the salons and barber shops are closed, and everyone knows why that is!

To stem the corona virus spread our governmental leaders ordered a shutdown of non-essential businesses. So, add frequenting your favorite establishments, and seeing your favorite folks within them, to the list of taken for granted things we enjoyed in pre-corona time. All of that is now off the table. Keeping one's hair perfectly and regularly trimmed, coiffed, blow-dried, and colored (even if only your hairdresser knows), is but one more Covid-19 affected necessity you once knew. Maintaining the perfect 'do' may be deemed essential for you, but in the eyes of the government, an essential business for your persona remains non-essential for the public's health and welfare. So what does the future holds as weeks stretching into months of shutdown continue and the gray starts to show and controlling your locks goes beyond  a 'comb-over' remedy?

I don't know how this will play out, but I have a prediction. It's based on a reliable model which appeared in the venerable Farmers' Almanac concerning weather forecasting. In that august publication, which coincidentally also hits the newsstands each August, the year's long-range weather outlook was as follows - several months of gradually cooling temperatures followed by several months of gradually warming temps, then the gradual return of cooler weather. Regardless of which TV weatherperson you swear by, and his or her track record in forecasting, you can definitely bet your firstborn on the perspicacity of that Farmers' Almanac forecast. So how does this perspective relate to hair?

T

It's very simple. As the time for everyone's customary visit to their go-to stylist goes by the wayside, each 'do' will as expected become increasingly fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, and matty. I then predict spotting our neighbors, even from mandated social distancing, as having more and more bad hair days. If image is everything, mounting self-consciousness and maintaining good grooming frustration will lead to more desperate instances of amateurish home trims. These valiant attempts might be either self-inflicted or abetted by significant others. Manufacturers and retailers could view this as good economic news as demand for hats of all kinds skyrockets to join the ranks of toilet paper in popularity.

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

long as God can grow it.

On a positive note, if you enjoy sporting facial hair, expert self-grooming is already a perfected skill ...

... at least for some folks.

In all seriousness, toss aside the lighthearted hirsute angst for a moment and let's circle back to the beginning of this post, i.e., all the salons and barber shops are closed! The closures put those favorite folks who have tended to our needs out of work, impacting not only their livelihoods, but their families' welfare and their futures. Granted, some will roll with the punches and creatively find ways to navigate the storm until inevitably it too will pass. But for many, the small operation shops they own will remain shuttered. Both owners and employees will suffer; their lives as they knew them will not return. 

How can we help - buying gift cards now to provide an infusion of cash to offset revenue loss, or paying for services now as if we had them as scheduled? Please share your thoughts in the Comment section at the bottom of the post to create a forum of ideas.

Thank you, stay safe, and continue to be well.

all images © David Greenfield

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WOTY

According to Wikipedia, the Word of the Year, sometimes abbreviated as WOTY or WotY, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year.

So, what might the 2020 Word of the Year be?

During this Corona Time into which we've been sheltered-in-place, I pondered the possibilities, but first looked to last year's winner for insight.

In 2019, Merriam Webster named They as its Word of the Year. The dictionary defined the singular They as a pronoun referring to a person whose gender identity is non-binary.  The gender neutral pronoun They would be used in place of He or She.

So what would be appropriate for 2020, the year of pandemic - the global crisis that dominates the news cycle and sucks up all the oxygen on the planet?

Two rather non-imaginative choices quickly came to mind - Covid-19 and of course, Corona. I ruled out Corona right away since it conjured up a 'meh-tasting' light beer - light in carbs, and alcohol as well. 2020 has become No Ordinary Time (1). It requires a designated moniker that is surely not 'meh'. How about Quarantine or Respirator/Ventilator, or Swab, or as Nancy Pelosi has advised, Test, Test, Test? Perhaps Social Distancing should be the winning expression. What about something with scientific mystique, like the alpha-numeric N-95?  All these terms are tossed out daily and have become part of the vernacular.

Nope, these options are predictable and pedestrian.  I continued searching, looking for another angle.

Social Distancing

Social Distancing - big time

                             

Adjectives, that's it! I switched to consideration of this class of modifiers.  Wouldn't Unprecedented or Draconian make sense? No. So far none of the words or expressions merited the Word of the Year's winner podium or even stimulated welcome production of viral antibodies.  Then it hit me - ZOOM! Of course, it had to be ZOOM!

With social distancing colliding with the human need for personal connection, ZOOM's online platform is the new paradigm for connectivity.  ZOOM is all the buzz.  In just one day last week, the app was downloaded 275,000 times! (2) For the foreseeable future ZOOM-ing may be the new meeting up norm.

So how does one ZOOM? For anyone who has not already ZOOM-ed into a previously cancelled pre-Corona face-to-face meeting, here's one simple scenario.

Starting Scribble

Aside from all the joyful pop-up opportunities my wife and I have each week to be with our two local grandkids, Thursdays have been the traditional day we pick them up from school and spend the entire afternoon together. Covid-19 abruptly put the kibosh on that, but ZOOM still lets us engage in real time.  First we played Pictionary and then tried another enjoyable, creative game, Scribble. I start with a quick doodle-type stroke of the pen (see above), then its up to them to add their own scribble.  Here's an example of their piggybacking on my scribble and my finishing touch piggy back on their creation: 

Finished Scribble Creation

The joint scribbling exercise put smiles on our faces and we continue to explore more ZOOM ways to reach out and touch one another. But ZOOM-ing has longer legs.  ZOOM-ed connectivity also facilitates the critical ongoing work of repairing our broken world.  Whether your mission is political activism, providing for those who are hungry, welcoming the stranger, comforting the lonely, healing the environment, or focusing on any other worthy need, Corona time should not handcuff you and halt doing the right thing. I will continue longing for pre-Corona warm, meaningful, and necessary human interaction, but for now, "it is what it is" and ZOOM is my WOTY.  

PS: That said, if on occasion you still struggle, needing a morale boost or simply to chill from the burdens thrust upon you, remember what Jimmy Buffet and Alan Jackson crooned from Margaritaville, "it's always 5 o'clock somewhere". Of course, a few cold meh Corona Premiers may not suffice, but no worries, try this:  

   

                                             

 ****************************************************************

(1) Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of FDR during the war years   

(2) Wall Street Journal - March 21, 2020

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