The Online Photographer

Sunday Support Group: Struggle! (OT)

I'm big on big plans. I'm an "Idealist" personality type—see the definition at Keirsey—and we tend to be big on head-in-the-clouds ideas.

But the Big Plan often leads to the Big Fizz. Things fizzle out. Meaning, my high-flying ambitions collapse like a bad soufflé in the face of the work needed to attain them. My big ideas shrink. Slink away to oblivion. The rubbish heap of my unrealistic ambitions is a high one.

But here's an interesting thing. I'm getting a bit older now, as longtime readers know. I was in my forties when I started this blog, and still passed for youngish. Now I'm settling comfortably into my sixties. (My birthday is on Thursday—it's the Macca one. And thank you, MikeR, for the funny card and the piece of your mind!) And when you start getting older, or so I read, one of the recommendations for keeping your mind healthy is to deliberately struggle with new things. Not to attain things, necessarily. Just to challenge yourself.

Struggle...for the sake of the struggle.

My big plans were usually based around results—around attainment. That was the big idea. I de-emphasized the journey, exalted the destination. But when you look into it, it turns out that to keep your brain flexible and lithe, responsive and athletic, one thing that's important is to struggle with new things. Learning a musical instrument is often mentioned as being beneficial, if you're not musical and don't already play. Learning a language, or, if you already know more than one, learning a new one, or a harder one. For instance, if you speak three Romance languages, trying Thai, or Navajo, or Tagalog.

Learn to dance. Not despite, but because, you've always had "two left feet." If you're a photographer and already good at looking, paint. My friend Nick, as photographer most of his life, is learning to be a potter and is doing great at it. If you grew up in the era when "rote memorization" was in disfavor as a pedagogic method for kids (it was very much in style for the Greatest Generation and earlier, distinctly out of style by the time the Baby Boomers came along), memorize some poems. If you're "innumerate" (a coined word applying the concept of illiteracy to numbers), take a math class. If you're "terrible with names," start trying to learn and remember the names of the people life throws in your path every day. (My mailman is Charles.)

You get the idea. It's not the attainment that matters. It's the struggle. I'm not into the theory, so I'm not going to talk about blazing new neural pathways or whatever. But this idea, of "struggling on purpose" as stretching exercises for your brain, is something I've been aware of for a few years and it's beginning to sink in.

If something is hard for you, don't worry about it—that's the point. Is learning Chinese online frustrating? Great! You're doing well then. Is memorizing sequences of movements on the dance floor something for which you have no aptitude? Well then, crank up the Victrola, grab your sweetie, and cut the rug...I don't know, are there ballroom dancing classes online? There must be.

It's an odd concept for me. We all gravitate to the things we already do well—we like to feel good about ourselves, and deliberately throwing up challenges that are "outside of our comfort zone" is against human nature. And I have some reservations about it, because I think it's very difficult to stick to something we have no natural aptitude for—aptitude is what leads to reward, and it's tough to stick to anything without reward.

But that's actually one of the advantages of the struggle-for-the-sake-of-the-struggle model...if you spent three weeks grappling with Mandarin on Duolingo and then just drifted away from it because you weren't getting anywhere or it was just too much of a slog, well, it's not a failure. You've done your brain some good. 

Nice.

Old Photo Dawgs
Anyway...after I'm nothing if not game. After reading the last part of Dave's comment to the post on Friday (and Chris Hunt's seconding of Dave's comment), late last night I spent an hour at a touch-typing learning site online.

And...actually rather enjoyed it.

But I don't know. I really don't know. Can I learn to type? Can you really teach an old Photo-Dawg new tricks? I kind of doubt it. Those old neural pathways are really grooved. Learning to touch-type feels an awful lot like just another Big Plan to me. One inevitably bound for the Big Fizz.

Maybe, though, even if I can't learn to type, the time taken for the attempt won't have been wasted. It'll be a failure, but, like trying and failing to summit Everest, at least I'll be able to say I tried.

Here's a weird thing—this morning, back to my regular old four-finger typing method, I'm typing noticeably better. What's up with that?

Anyway, aiming to struggle with new and challenging things, even if you fail—that would be a "big plan," wouldn't it? An idealistic ambition? And I've always been good at those.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Taking several online typing tests, which I just did, I time out at about 45 words per minute with 100% accuracy, which is better than the average of 36 WPM. But I'm at a disadvantage in that test because I have to look at what I'm supposed to type. That's not typical of the way I write. Most of the time I can type without looking at the keyboard, but I do have to check back and forth from time to time. I probably look at the keyboard one-third to half of the time I'm typing? Something like that. So copying slows me down a lot. I've always been aware of that. Based on those tests, I would guess that when I write "out of my head" rather than trying to copy something (like writing this, for instance), I'm probably around 60 WPM. Although stopping to correct frequent mistakes slows me down then too. Because my fingers fly around the keyboard, I frequently hit two keys and the wrong one registers and I have to go back. If my fingers moved less (or if I were more coordinated) I might be faster. (Today is a good typing day, BTW.)

I should set a timer for three minutes and just write something, then count the words and the errors. That would give a better idea of how fast I actually type when I write. But many times I just don't need to type faster because before I type I have to think about what I'm about to say.

ASW comments, "I wonder if some (lucky?) people find a typing style that matches the pace of their thinking. Most TOP readers would agree that your writing is clear, concise, and organized. Maybe your hunt-and-peck typing style matches the pace of your idea formulation, or even facilitates your writing process."

That might be the case. If my typing keeps up with my composing speed, then there's no problem, right? After all, I'm a writer, not a secretary or a data-entry person. The fastest typists I've known were a photographer in the '90s who worked at a family typesetting business, and my current doctor. He says he's never been timed but I would bet good money he's easily above 100 WPM, and if he timed out at 130 I wouldn't be at all surprised. He will type up an original half-page summary of a 20-minute appointment while he's talking to me, and it takes what seems ninety seconds. Other people I know who are patients of his also remark on it.

But I definitely notice that my typing skills are deteriorating. I first saw signs of it at age 45, and it's been getting very slightly worse since then. These days I have "good typing days" and "bad typing days." Sometimes I'm fast, sometimes things don't flow. When I have bad typing days I make loads of errors and it definitely slows down my work.

Book Product o' This Week:

Is it too late for this? 2021 is still young. There are two reasons to value these Michael Kenna calendars from Nazraeli Press: one is that his originals are 8x8", so these pictures are meant to work at wall-calendar sizes. The other is that Michael's calendars can actually increase in value! Dan Smith suggested this, and he reports that some older ones sell in the hundreds of dollars. "The printing is excellent," Dan wrote, "and the calendar is beautiful."

The above link takes you from TOP to Amazon. This week's pick is not available at Amazon Canada, but 2019 is. Hey, the pictures are still good. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bill Tyler: "Here's one data point, admittedly anecdotal, about re-learning typing technique. I learned touch typing in high school—the most useful single class I took in those four years. But in my 50s, I began having severe pain in my right thumb as a result of using it in the canonical way to hit the space bar, and developing arthritis. So I tried switching to my left thumb. It took about two weeks to make that natural. Then the same pain started developing in my left thumb, so I switched to using my right index finger on the space bar. That took another two weeks to feel natural. Several decades later, my right thumb is not fully normal, but for a long time it's been reasonably OK. I still use my right index finger for the space bar. So each time I switched my typing patterns, it took a couple of weeks for the new pattern to feel natural. Your mileage may vary, but it may be worth the attempt. At the very least, you'll be taking another journey."

Brian Stewart: "Excerpt from 'Ithaka' (1911), by Constantine P. Cavafy (I'm unsure of who did this particular translation):

'When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.

'Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.'"

Paul in AZ: "Many, many years ago my high school had a required class in typing as part of their university entrance track. Seemed silly to me at the time. As I recall 60 words per minute was a passing grade. I actually got pretty good at touch typing. Needless to say that course in touch typing could be the most useful single course I took in high school."

David Dyer-Bennet: "In terms of matching speed of thought to speed of output (typing), my own experience, and watching and talking to many professional writers, what I see is that often you think quite a while—and then have a bunch of stuff to dump out to paper (you didn't write it all in your head, but you decided roughly how it was going to go, and then it gushes out). Fast typing makes that last step much less frustrating."

Dominic Tantram (partial comment): "Just a note, no doubt covered by others; but current neuroscience suggests you definitely can forge new tracks in a matter of months. Significant improvement in your typing should be possible. While your big goals set ambition, you also need milestones so you can see (and congratulate yourself on) progress."

Ilkka: "Don’t worry about it. You have been typing for some 40 years already [50 —Ed.]. You are doing fine. Content is more important than speed. Where’s the rush? Your advice for young people is good. But at our age? I wouldn’t worry about it."

Steve Rosenblum: "My mother (may she rest in peace) made me take a typing class in high school. I pushed back pretty hard on it but she was adamant. I said, 'Aw, Mom! Why should I take typing? Only girls take that class! [Note this was in 1967 and I was 15.] The ones who are planning to work as secretaries. What's the point?!' She wisely said, 'You're planning on going to college, right? You are going to have a lot of papers to write and turn in. Who do you think is going to type all those papers for you? I'm certainly not going to pay anyone to do it, so are you going to spend all your savings on having papers typed?' So, under protest, I took the class. There I was, the only boy in a class full of girls, and too young and dumb to see that as the great advantage it might have been! But, I took to typing like a duck to water and became pretty proficient.

"Little did I know that 20 years later there would be a PC with a keyboard attached on every desk. As others have said, it was likely the most useful course I took in high school from a practical skill standpoint. Thanks, Mom!"

Peter Jeffrey Croft: "I'm almost exactly 10 years ahead of you on life's path and you speak of things that are much on my mind.

"First, on big plans, it's exercise for the brain just as we need exercise for the body. Seems self-evident.

"Second, instead of saying, 'I wonder if I could do this,' say, 'I'm going to do this. What do I need to do to achieve it?' Positivity. In 1974 I had the chance to go to UK and Europe (I was 27). I started thinking, 'Oh, can I do this?' But I switched to, 'I'm going; so what do I need to do?' It worked.

"Third, I never got a university degree, only a technical college three-year diploma. I've always wanted to do a degree but I wanted to travel a lot. Since this pandemic stops us travelling, it looks like my time has come to go to university, at 74. Too old? I read today of an Italian guy who got his first degree at 83. There are many, many stories like this.

"Fourth, I'm a two-finger typist but my fingers seem to know where to go by themselves. Like the others, I've found that I type at about the same rate as I think, which probably doesn't say much. I've never measured my speed but I don't care, I compose as I go.

"Finally, when PCs were just being born in the late '80s, and I was a tech, I didn't care what faults developed, I saw it as a learning exercise. Every fault was my challenge to overcome. It worked—there isn't much I haven't seen and overcome in the past 40 years."

Sunday Support Group: Six Weeks (OT)

This might be a little hard to see.

To order a new belt yesterday, I had to measure the old one. And when I laid it out on the kitchen counter I noticed that the buckle-marks on the belt chronicled my recent weight loss—I lost ~55 pounds in the first half of 2020, and have maintained it since then. You can see how that last mark, just to the right of the last hole, is rather faint. I had to have this belt cut down last Summer, and three new holes (the ones on the right) punched.

Simple?
How I did it seems rather simple now. I tried to get 80% of my calories from whole plant foods and time-restrict my eating. Nothing to it.

How I eat now is that I basically follow Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen—here's the introductory video, and the free Android/Apple app is called "Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen." (Note the spelling of "Greger.") Here's a page with a longer list of videos.

I've written about all this before, but I'm trying to encourage you.  :-)

Easy weight loss
The magic trick is to time-restrict your eating. At least that was the key for me. This is what makes healthy eating and jettisoning the blubber easy and effortless. Simply pick a rigid window of time in which you'll do all your eating every day. Outside of that window, eat nothing. Ingest nothing but plain cold water, and be strict about it. Inside of that window, eat all the good food you want. Actually, as long as you're eating good food, you should eat as much as you can. I was so used to the idea of "calorie restriction" or "portion control" as an integral part of weight-loss dieting that it took me time and effort to overcome that mindset. But if there's one truth to weight-loss dieting, it's this: calorie restriction diets never work. Eat too little and you risk being hungry, and that's bad. So load 'er on in. Eat up.

What I found is that you can "train" your body to only expect food at certain times, and at other times you simply won't be uncomfortable because your body isn't expecting to be fed. My "window" is the seven hours from nine to four every day, although the actual span from my first bite to the last is often shorter than that. You can use an eight- or nine- or ten- or even a twelve-hour window if you want—just end your eating at least two hours before bedtime (three is better). I'd recommend ten or less.

Those of us with dogs know how it is. If you feed your animals on a regular schedule, they will know when it's dinner time. And they'll let you know in no uncertain terms if you forget! It's because they get hungry when their bodies anticipate food. Well, we humans are the same way. Train yourself, and you'll get hungry when it's time to eat, and you won't be hungry during the other parts of the day.

Be strict about this, or it won't work. Easy to say.

The DD
If you've got all sorts of encrusted beliefs about plant-eaters, what I'd say is...don't worry about it. Just do it. Just do it while you're losing the weight if you want to. Personally, I think that anyone who can follow the Daily Dozen with 100% compliance for six weeks will be hooked, because of how much better you will feel all the time. I found it absolutely astonishing. But suit yourself. If you want to, do it for six weeks and then go back to steaks and cupcakes. Food isn't ideology.

And if you think it's too hard to switch over, I get that too.

Unfortunately, when people say "try WFPB for six weeks," it's not quite that easy. You might not be able to just snap your fingers and switch over completely. First of all, it's tough to work out what you'll actually eat and how to fix it; and secondly, your gut needs time to adjust. The #1 nutritional deficiency in the developed Western world is fiber, a nutrient critical to the maintenance of adequate gut flora, and there are a thousand different kinds. If you don't eat fiber-rich foods, your gut might not be able to handle a sudden glut of fiber-rich foods. If you have trouble with beans, for example, start slow and eat some every day. Eat a salad every day, and put three beans on the first one, four on the second, until you work up to a spoonful or two every day at the same time. Your body will adapt. You're not that different.

S+S+S+Sv
Here's how to switch over to a WFPB or Daily-Dozen-type diet: start with breakfast. Once you've worked out what to eat for breakfast that's in tune with the DD, eat that way for a few weeks and then start working on lunch. After you've got that worked out, start on supper or dinner or whatever you want to call your last meal. Only then can you really clean everything up into 100% compliance and start your six-week experiment. It might just take a while, is all. If it does, can't be helped.

Personally, what's been crucial for me has been to have a "go-to" that's easy and convenient. What saved me are the "Four S's": smoothies, salads, soups, and steamed vegetables. Each of these sound like they're the same thing, but of course each of them is infinitely variable, so I don't get sick of them.

I've only recently developed  a robust dinner meal. It's super easy and convenient. What I do is start with the healthiest canned supermarket soup I can find (the thing to watch most closely is the sodium—canned soups are mostly loaded with it. Here's one that isn't, and there are more). I keep a container of cooked brown rice in the fridge, and I always have a can of pre-cooked beans and a can of organic petite diced tomatoes going in the fridge as well. Starting with the can of soup as flavoring—which can be one of any of a number of kinds—I add a ladle or two of brown rice and a couple of spoonfuls of beans, microwave it until it's hot, then add a finely diced clove of garlic and a couple of spoonfuls of diced tomatoes. This takes only a few minutes to fix, it's different every day, and it requires very little work. And it's as tasty as the soup it starts out as.

Of course I don't eat this every day—some days I'm feeling more adventurous, or have the energy to cook something more involved, or I've made homemade soup for the week—but you need a fallback for when you have nothing and don't feel like cooking.

Because my window for eating is only seven hours, I'm usually not hungry for the last meal anyway. I eat all I can, but often I don't want all that much.

What if you can't?
Probably the biggest impediments for most people in settling on a window of time for time-restricted eating are social customs and work schedules. I get that. I'm single and my own boss, so if I want to wrap up my last meal at 3 p.m. it's not a big deal. And I don't have to cook for picky kids or a meat-eating mate. Do the best you can.

Just remember that eating is a challenge for your system, and your body needs time to process the food you've eaten—so give it as long a continuous rest every day as you can. It needs it. It will repay you with better health, more energy, fewer aches and pains, better sleep, and a greater sense of well-being. It's been more than worth it for me. And it's not even hard!

I really do urge you to watch that short video. A good first step. Another excellent introduction is the movie Forks Over Knives.

The bottom line is: whatever else you eat, your body needs plants. Plants are the only source of fiber, the original source of protein (what, do you think cows eat meat?), and the ammunition for autophagy. There are thousands of phytochemicals in plants that your body simply needs in order to keep you healthy and humming along, in myriad ways. Food is medicine. Give your body what it really needs, and you'll feel it—you won't need me or anybody else to convince you of anything.

Go for it!

Mike

Book o' This Week:

Pulitzer-prizewinner Isabel Wilkerson's greatly lauded book Caste: The origins of our discontents, a rare non-photography-related recommendation, might be the book of the historical moment in the United States. The above link takes you from TOP to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rodger Kingston: "Great post! I've been doing something similar for four and a half years, since a stroke in July 2016, and so far I've lost (and kept off) about the same 55 pounds as you.

"My belt photo, similar to yours, measures 10 inches between the longest and shortest holes. I've looked at the video and other materials you suggest, and it may well be a better way to go. Thanks!"

James Kelley:

Mike says: The following might be the longest comment I've ever "featured," but all the people who are bored by this subject have long since stopped reading anyway, so for those of us who are left, here goes...

adamct: I know there are people who dislike these posts, but I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your posts played a significant role in convincing me to adopt a WFPB diet, and the results have absolutely shocked me. I went from being over 250 lbs. to around 175–180 lbs. But it's more than just weight loss. I have a family history of heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's, and a WFPB diet significantly reduces my risks of developing those as well.

"There are a few points I want to add to what you said:

"1. Dieting doesn't work. I'm fully convinced of that. The only thing that works is a long-term lifestyle change. I knew that headed into this, and it is what I wanted. A diet focused on counting calories or restricting portions of whatever is doomed to fail because it is inherently short-term, too complicated, and based on depriving yourself. I eat as much as I want, whenever I want. It's just that I make sure that I am eating healthful food. I don't pay any attention to calories or portion size whatsoever. That is sustainable.

"2. I've been amazed at how easy the switch was. The hardest part about making the switch to a WFPB diet is making the decision to do it. Once you do, you will wonder why you didn't do it earlier. There is a lot of angst and pop culture telling you that the switch is hard—it isn't. Along those lines, I would caution that not everyone will find adjusting to a high-fiber diet hard. I don't mean to imply that nobody will, but don't let yourself be put off my Mike's comments about the adjustment. I make a pretty radical switch and didn't have any digestion issues at all.

"3. You don't need to time-restrict your meal times. If that helps you, go for it. But studies seem to show that the primary benefit of time-restricted feeding is just that people eat less, not that there is any real magic to time-restricted feeding per se. Eating 2,000 calories within eight hours isn't any different from eating 2,000 calories within 16 hours. But eating 2,000 calories in eight hours is very different from eating 3,000 calories in 16 hours.

"4. When I eat, I eat enormous amounts. I make salads that would normally feed a family of six. [Me too —Mike the Ed.] But...it's all salad. The total calories just can't be that high and I never think about them. Instead, I think about all the nutrients I'm getting and how good my food tastes. But when I'm not eating...I'm not hungry. In fact, I am rarely hungry these days, whereas when I was eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), I was hungry all the time. It is amazing that you can eat this way, lose all this weight, improve your health, and not be hungry.

"5. I would encourage you to avoid all meat, dairy and eggs, other than trace amounts that are in pre-made, primarily plant-based foods or that are 'hidden' in vegetarian or vegan meals eaten in restaurants. I could go on at length as to why, but I'll just say two things here: 1.) the science shows that even small amounts of animal protein significantly increase your risk of various diseases, and 2.) it is easier to avoid all meat, dairy and eggs, than it is to limit yourself to 'some' meat, dairy or eggs. Part of what is hard about dieting is forcing yourself to make decisions: is it OK if I eat a cookie, if I only eat half, or limit myself to one? Is it OK if I have a ham sandwich, if I omit the mayo and have it on whole wheat bread? Is it OK to have an egg with my oatmeal? Part of the benefit of adopting a strict WFPB diet is that it is so much easier from a psychological perspective to not have to make those decisions. You are establishing bright lines that relieve you of having to make constant decisions, testing your willpower, and deprive yourself of what you 'want.' Going all-in may seem harder, but it is actually easier.

"6. The 'whole foods' part is really, really important. You could subsist on potato chips, french fries, donuts, white bread, etc. and be a vegetarian, even vegan. But it wouldn't be healthy. Consuming whole foods is what makes this approach to diet work. For this reason, I don't eat any of the vegan 'substitutes' out there. [Me neither —Mike the Ed. again.] I don't eat meat-substitutes, vegan cheese, vegan sausages, etc. All of those products are highly, highly processed. Why trade one set of highly processed foods for another set of highly processed foods?

"7. I went pseudo-vegan a while ago and lost some weight, but it wasn't dramatic. When I cut out bread, pasta, potatoes and rice, I dropped weight so quickly it shocked me. I encourage you to do the same. I'm not anti-carb (I'm decidedly pro-carb!), but I make sure that I'm eating complex carbs from whole-food sources. I'll eat beans, lentils, nuts, whole grains, you name it and I'll load up on it. But avoid the bread, pasta, potatoes and rice, even though they are vegetarian/vegan.

"8. Calories are not calories. You can eat 2,000 calories on the SAD diet and 2,000 calories on a WFPB diet and still wind up losing weight on the WFPB diet. In fact, you can eat more than 2,000 calories on a WFPB diet and still lose weight! Why? Lots of reasons, but here are a few:

—Your body absorbs more of the calories in a SAD diet than a WFPB diet. You literally excrete more calories, undigested, on a WFPB diet. Just because you eat foods that theoretically have more calories, doesn't mean your body actually absorbs them and processes them.

—It takes energy to access energy / store energy. Your body can absorb and store the calories from a SAD meal pretty efficiently. It takes a lot more energy to break down, access and story the calories in a WFPB diet. So even if you consume the same amount of calories, the net amount of calories stored by your body on a WFPB diet will be lower.

—Adopting a WFPB diet is associated with a faster metabolism and higher body temperature, meaning you burn more calories just by, you know, existing.

"I could go on, but I know this can get tedious. Anyway, thanks for getting the word out and helping me, Mike, I am in your debt.

"P.S. Oh, and one more tip: be careful about buying new clothes as you lose weight. I started as a size XL (sometimes XXL). When I became a size L, I had to toss my entire wardrobe and bought a new wardrobe in size L...

"...But I kept losing weight. I blew past size L and am now generally a size M (sometimes even a size S) and had to replace my entire wardrobe yet again within a few months. If I had waited a few more months, I could have saved a fair amount of money.

"On the other hand, buying a new wardrobe as you lose weight is incredibly rewarding and satisfying!"

John Camp: "In addition to Caste, I would suggest White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. (Also available on Amazon—the books are actually paired there.) I think White Trash is the better book (I've read them both). Caste was an interesting book but seemed to me to be almost a semantic argument. Wilkerson insists on the importance of caste, but in practical terms, she seems almost to use it as a synonym for race. I think her book would have been more pointed if it had just been Race: The Origins of Our Discontents and didn't have this artificial construct imposed on it. I think the distinction lies in the fact that Isenberg is a professional historian and Wilkerson is a professional journalist, which affects their approaches to the subject matter, Isenberg being more rigorous, Wilkerson a better writer and more emotionally effective. Both books are well worth reading."

Barry Reid: "I'd like to concur with adamct. I appreciate the diet/liefestyle posts and they have provided encouragement as I have lost 44 lbs. over the last two years."

Mike replies: That is excellent. Strong work! And another way to think of that weight loss: that's two years you weren't gaining weight. Strange to say, but most overweight and obese people are not just overweight and obese—they're also actively gaining weight. That's one thing that finally got my attention—I tipped the scale at 273 and thought, "where does this stop?" I clearly saw myself reaching 300 lbs., then 315, then 325, and so on. Right now I haven't lost any weight for seven months, but I haven't gained any, either.

David Maxwell: "Well, here is another 'thanks for these posts' comment. I know you catch a lot of flack for not 'staying in your lane' (interesting, given that this is your blog), but for me they are the most valuable posts that you make. I have read a number of WFPB books that you have recommended and am fully convinced. I have been meat free for over two years, but struggle with the rest of it. Dairy is a major weakness. But I have recommitted myself and am now three weeks into a true WFPB diet. I enjoy it! Most of my meals are prepared on the slow cooker as that fits my lifestyle the best. I am fortunate to have a very supportive wife who eats what I prepare and also works to accommodate me when she cooks.

"Unfortunately my activity level is not what I would like it to be given that I am not currently working and watch my nearly three-year-old son full time. I bought an exercise bike a few weeks ago but haven't developed a habit yet.

"I have been weighing myself daily and it isn't always encouraging. I am slowly trending down, but there is a lot of variation on a day to day basis. Like weighing two pounds more this morning than yesterday despite eating a normal amount with no junk. Is this normal? I am very consistent—weigh in the same clothes and before going to the bathroom first thing every morning.

"I am optimistic that this type of lifestyle will be the solution to my weight and energy struggles. Thanks again Mike!"

adamct replies to David: "David—YES. That is completely and utterly normal. I have no idea how it's possible, either. I'm sure it has something to do with water retention and bowl movements and the timing of your last meal and black magic, but whatever it is, it is totally normal. And annoying as €£¥%. Stick to it. Weigh yourself daily but compare where you are after a month to where you were when you started. Hang in there, man. It's worth it."

Mike replies to David: I agree it can be frustrating. I stop losing weight—they call it "plateau-ing"—for weeks or even months at a time. That's what the record shows.

Are you eating any sugar? Overt or covert? Any alcohol? Be aware that many supermarket foods have added sugar these days (it's the perfect industrial additive, except for the wee detail that it's disastrous for public health). The body is a scavenger, and will use the easiest source for energy and pack away the rest as fat. I weigh myself morning and night and it becomes obvious which foods are conducive to weight loss and which aren't. For instance, nuts, which are loaded with fat, barely move the needle. But white bread, which is vegan and traditional and seems harmless, will make my weight shoot up very noticeably and stay up for days. It's very interesting that eating the same amount of white bread and real whole-wheat bread (both from the same Mennonite bakery) have very different results on the scale for me. White rice vs. brown rice, ditto. Even small amounts of candy set me back after a couple of days.

Oil is the other thing to watch out for. Many WFPB doctors recommend no oil at all. Chinese takeout—very bad. It's totally vegan, but it's loaded with oil. It's easy to sauté without oil at home, but there's a trick to it and it has to be learned.

Keep in mind the ideal rate of weight loss is a pound a week or less. That's barely detectable beneath the everyday fluctuations. But it's 52 pounds in a year! So don't be discouraged.

The way I think of the scale is, it's just data. I don't look to it for encouragement. I just gather the data. It's very tempting to skip the weigh-in when you know you've pigged out on something unhealthy and you suspect the number on the scale is going to punish you. But that's how people give up and start to regain. So just gather the data and don't worry about the day-to-day. If you have a bad day food-wise, have a better day the following day.

And don't forget, unlike many bad-for-you weight-loss diets, this way of eating is great for your body and your health. It will pay dividends over the long run in better blood work numbers, lower blood pressure, lower disease risk, better overall health, and a feeling of well-being, whether you lose weight or not.

Sunday Support Group: The Elusive Owen Edwards

Egotism is annoying, but excessive modesty can be problematic too.

I like essays, and their less prestigious cousins, columns, as literary forms. (Blog posts are a still more junior relative.) One of my early heroes and models was a fellow named Owen Edwards, who wrote a regular column for American Photographer magazine (he was its exhibition critic. The magazine's name was later changed to American Photo). Unlike bat bombs, the smell of rain, and the color of the Universe, however, American Photographer magazine does not have a Wikipedia page.

Neither does Owen Edwards, so I really know very little about him...including whether the "Owen Edwards" bylines I keep running across here and there all belong to the same person. Here's one, for instance, from Smithsonian, about the way Norman Rockwell tells stories in a single frame*. Same writer? Seems so, on the textual evidence. (Consider this playful little sentence: "Serious art critics often dismiss Rockwell as a cautious and calculating master of the middle way, a kind of mild moderator of lives too sweet and too narrow." Sounds familiar, although I haven't read those old AP columns for years and years.) Or this little article about the best management memo ever, dispensed by a tough-as-nails Marine Corps General. That one, from Design Observer, has an author photo, the only one I've ever seen for O.E. (if it's he), but as usual the bio says nothing except "the writer of this has written other things."

Owen Edwards, I think. Maybe.

If only the guy had a little more ego, if he would spend more time and effort on self-promotion—you know, toot his own horn a little more loudly—reveal more—disclose!—he might be easier to track. You can't go anywhere to get away from some types of celebrities these days, but each of us has a different definitions of what a celebrity is, based on what we ourselves value. It seems like the people who are celebrities to me always go hiding their light under a bushel.

So my question is, how long am I going to have to wait for Selected Essays and Articles of Owen Edwards? Or, more selfishly still, The Photography Writings of Owen Edwards? Because I don't mean to sound impatient, but I don't have forever. I'm beginning to get up there a bit. According to this Life Expectancy Calculator, the most realistic projection, statistically, is that I'll die at 83, which is 20 years from now. Considering how little I have to show for my other twenty-year periods on this globe, the thought that I might have only one more is a sobering thought. I recall that my most inevitable regret in life was crystallized when I saw it on a needlepoint pillow in a boutique in Harbor Springs, Michigan: "So Many Books, So Little Time."

Anyway, I've been waiting to re-read all of those American Photographer columns for many years now, and the window of opportunity for me to see such a book has now narrowed to 20 years give or take. Whoever "Owen Edwards" is (given that all I know about him is that he's a writer who has written things), I wish he'd get on the stick. I'd really like to buy that Best of... book.

While I'm on the subject, we need a Collected Writings of John Szarkowski and a Best of Richard B. Woodward, too.

I should live so long!

Mike
(Thanks to Becky Barnicoat and
Maximilian Zender for those Wikipedia pages.)

*It reminded me of this video, "Why THE FAR SIDE is a masterclass in storytelling" from The Gaze.

Book o' Last Week (new one coming up):

Peter Lindbergh On Fashion Photography, with text in English, French, and German. Original coffee table version or small 40th Anniversary version, take your pick. Both are hardcovers. The links above will whisk you away to Amazon.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Re 'If only the guy had a little more ego, if he would spend more time and effort on self-promotion—you know, toot his own horn a little more loudly—reveal more—disclose!—he might be easier to track': Owens seems to be one of the great many legions of wandering tinkerer wordsmiths who make a living caroming between odd jobs of disposable work. And he’s probably been quite happy at it, too. Little of this, little of that, just like someone else we all know. There does seem to be a book of some of his essays available.

"Back to photography: I’m actually in the middle of whittling a short piece on two photographers, both now deceased, who made their way in the world of mid-century imaging essentially as wandering tinkerers. But unlike their countless peers, these snappers’ works easily rivaled, and indeed surpassed, much of the most renowned works by their much better known (more 'egotistical' self-promoting) contemporaries. Fortunately they each have a couple of books currently available as mementos of their works. More soon."

Michael: "Thanks for the link to The Gaze. Excellent piece."

Mike replies: It's really as good as a very fine magazine article or essay, isn't it? But told—effectively—in the medium of video.

David Aiken: "At the side of the article about General Shoup, there is the following note about Owen Edwards: 'Owen Edwards is the co-author of the design book Quintessence, and the author of its sequel Elegant Solutions. His latest book, Caught in the Act, a collaboration with Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein, was published in October of 2013.' I think you already have a couple of books you can chase down.  :-) "

Mike replies: Not really. Those don't fulfill the brief of collecting of his writings on photography...even though Caught in the Act is a book of Howard Schatz's photographs.

Sunday Support Group (a Day Late): Idle Question

I told my niece yesterday that the problem with my life during the pandemic is that every day is pretty much like every other day. Then I reflected that most of the excitement in the world is the wrong kind of excitement, so I oughtn't complain. Here in the USA, we have to get through Wednesday. Everything lately seems to be a question of getting through something.

Idle diversion: what do you think was the greatest artistic accomplishment of the 20th century? In any art. Define it however you'd like.

I think that the grander an idle question is, the less important the answer may be. Which is the opposite of what you'd expect; but, really, it's more important to decide what the best 35mm lens is than it is to decide what's the best religion, or who was the greatest world leader, or other large issues like that. The smaller the bite, the better it can be chewed. So have a little fun with this question if it inspires thought; but don't fret or stress about it otherwise.

I have my answer in mind but I want to see if anyone else comes up with it, which would show I'm not crazy.

Hang in there,

Mike

Book o' This Week:

Peter Lindbergh On Fashion Photography, with text in English, French, and German. Original coffee table version or small 40th Anniversary version, take your pick. Both are hardcovers. The links above will spirit you away to Amazon.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

I'm not going to "feature" any answers to my idle question because it's easy to read through all of them and so many are interesting, thoughtful, thought-provoking, or inventive, or function as leads (I had never heard of Joaquin Sorolla). The Sydney Opera House received two votes, and so did Star Wars, and so did the Pale Blue Dot. To see all the comments, click "Comments" in the post footer, or click on the post title and scroll down.

I was going to nominate "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the 1967 album by the Beatles. It seems to me that music rose to the forefront of culture for a brief time—just a couple of decades, maybe less—as it had done in Europe in the classical period of classical music (from Haydn through Schubert), or as theater rose to the peak of culture in Elizabethan England. During that time, music drove culture and also reflected it; the popular and the esoteric merged; and it was the focus of a great many young peoples' enthusiasm and ambition. The Beatles were the brief flowering of the period's most remarkable achievement in so many ways, the equivalent of Shakespeare when English theater had its cultural moment. They began as a mere "boy band" not dissimilar to 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys, a form of adolescent "lekking" of no more significance than any transient teen heartthrob, then improbably rose to embody and define a new kind of art music. In 1967 their every artistic move arguably held the entire public in the English-speaking world spellbound. Positive or negative, everyone had an opinion about what they did. Their cross-combining of genres was new and vigorous, and they had just the right producer—a former impresario of comedy and novelty records—and he and the band essentially bridge the gap between a documentary style of recording live music to a new form of musical creation that involved the creative manipulation of the means of recording. The Beatles embodied and defined what a rock and roll band could and should be—its components, its gestures, its career arc—during the center of the music's most charged cultural moment, and both influenced and transcended it for the rest of the 20th century, until it reached its swan song in '90s grunge and "alternative."

And "Sgt. Pepper's" was the band's masterpiece, and includes its most transcendent psychedelic song. The album functions more like a integrated song-cycle which, along with a few handfuls of others, defines the 12-inch album—the vinyl record together with its packaging—as a medium of pop art.

However, my answer isn't any better than anyone else's. I can certainly see the argument for Duchamp, proposed by Cecelia and seconded by Kenneth Tanaka. So maybe he gets the palm.

My only problem with that proposition is that you have to understand his accomplishment as being his influence, because his art isn't well known to the public and never was. Ask the average man or woman on the street who Marcel Duchamp was and I'll bet only a minority will say "artist." (Some will say "mime," I bet, ha ha.)  I did say you should define "accomplishment" however you wanted to, though. And influence is an accomplishment.

In my understanding I group Duchamp with a number of disparate influences that redefined visual art at a further distance from photography, which had effortlessly appropriated figurative representation in a way that art could never hope to match. (Photography didn't kill painting but it sure killed Trompe-l'œil and fastidious history painting as practiced by, say, Ernest Meissonier.) The project was to preserve the status and prestige of visual art...and the aristocracy's interest in the project was to preserve the monetary value of art's physical artifacts. The way I see it, Picasso's significance was that he recast the whole history of art to emphasize its non-representational aspects; Duchamp's significance was as an ideological counterpart. (They were more or less exact contemporaries, although Picasso's lifespan was longer.) They can both be understood as part of the same project, in my view.

But maybe that's unfair to them. To see the art of the 20th century in the context of its relationship to photography, as I do, is a minority view, idiosyncratic, perhaps eccentric. 

But if you're going to say Duchamp, shouldn't you also include Warhol? Aren't the two of them the twin poles of the idea that "art doesn't exist unless I say it does"? I'm just sayin'.   :-)

And now, time for me breakfast.

Sunday Support Group: Negative Energy

You've heard the expression "negative energy." But what exactly is it?

A psychologist might say that someone is "getting someone else to hold their feelings." And what the heck does that mean?

Here's a totally made-up scenario. Let's say that Person A gets into a fight with a tradesman, person P. They've got differences over services and a bill, and instead of resolving it calmly and unemotionally—you know, "like adults" (another fanciful expression!), the discussion deteriorates and turns acrimonious. Afterward, Person A is left feeling angry, aggrieved, wronged. He's worked up. Upset. Person P has vacated the premises, but Person A "perseverates" on the situation (keeps going over his arguments in his mind again and again, without anything changing.)

He later goes to the supermarket. In the parking lot, Person L pulls slowly out in front of him because she doesn't see him. He's not inconvenienced; he was only going three miles an hour; he wasn't that close to her; he doesn't have to slam on his brakes. Normally, he would just wait for her to pull around. Person L might even wave in apology when she realizes what she's done.

Instead, Person A "sees red." (Another expression.) His mind seizes on his rightness and her wrongness. Ignoring the fact that his car will be blocking a lane in the parking lot that other people need to use, he slams it in park, leaps out, stalks righteously over to Person L's car as she's waiting to pull out into the roadway, taps on her window, and, when she lowers it, proceeds to rant harshly at her for "cutting him off."

Person L, frightened, puts up her window, stares straight ahead, and nearly pulls in front of a truck which blasts its air horn at her. Person A retreats—thank God!—and she successfully negotiates her way out into traffic, finally. A quarter of a mile down the road, she bursts into tears.

That's "getting someone else to hold your feelings." (If you've never read James Joyce's very short story "Counterparts," you should. A brutal and scarifying elaboration of the seemingly harmless little expression "kicking the cat.")

Person A had no real reason to confront and verbally assault Person L. But he's dumped his toxic feelings on her, the residue of his dispute with Person P, and he's certainly been a conduit for spreading negative energy in the world. She had been feeling sunny and friendly, and had just enjoyed a chat with the nice young checkout girl. She didn't have to have her morning ruined.

Just because one person is feeling shitty is actually no excuse for them to make another person feel that way.

Afterwards he doesn't even really feel better, except that maybe now he's perseverating on Person L's supposed transgression and his own feelings of righteousness about the situation—I had the right of way!—people like her shouldn't be allowed to drive!—instead of his dispute with Person P.

Emperors...not
The older I get, the more aware I am of "negative energy" and its various forms and manifestations. The other day, on my vacation, I was reading a forum (about pool, not photography), and came across a thread about a subject I wanted to know more about. One of the participants was a "deep expert" who also happens to be, in my judgement (judge not, and ye shall not be judged), an egotistical horse's ass. In the thread he was getting into it with some other personage who also couldn't be wrong. They proceeded to rub each other raw; and about four pages into the six-screen thread I was starting to feel agitated myself just from reading it. (...And if you've never heard Todd Rundgren's faux-operatic little lampoon "The Emperor of the Highway," give it a listen. Read the lyrics too. Makes me chuckle to this day.)

There was really no reason why the two of them couldn't simply have been polite. They could have disagreed just as much, and just as effectively. I had kept reading the dang thread because there were a few nuggets of good information in it.

About twenty minutes later, standing at the stove, stirring, I became aware that I was feeling stressed and tense. I've been in the habit lately of "interrogating my feelings"—another fancy phrase; I just try to become aware of what I'm feeling and then see if I can figure out why. Curiously, it's not always an easy riddle. This time, though, I quickly realized it was because of that nasty exchange I had read earlier in that forum.

Back at the computer later, I checked. That thread turned out to have been from March 2015.

So for almost six years that misbegotten little pustule of ugliness had lain buried like a time capsule waiting patiently for people like me to come along and trip over it. At which point it releases its vapors of nastiness anew to pollute someone else's air.  Maybe the better hyperbolic metaphor would be a forgotten and neglected but still-armed land mine? The antagonists could have been dead, yet there it stays, frozen in amber, preserved, to radiate its bad vibes indiscriminately into the future like a buried curse.

That's negative energy too.

Snark and scorn
I find I have a lot of resolutions this year! And I don't even believe in New Years resolutions.

One is, clean the house. Not for virtue; only because I suspect I will feel happier in a clean, orderly house. Second, I want to get most of the things I don't need out of my life.

That goes way beyond the two Micro 4/3 lenses to which I still cling. I hang on to all sorts of things. For instance, when I lived in Washington D.C., I taught myself Japanese four-hole stab bookbinding. I made two very nice Japanese-bound books back then, one of which is blank. That was, at a minimum, 30 years ago. Could have been more. Yet I still have the box of bookbinding supplies. I've carried it with me faithfully through a number of house moves, just as if it still belonged to my future. ...Which thirty-odd years of neglect have amply demonstrated it does not. I will harden my heart and let go of that box—this is that year!

Material resolutions are trivial, though. They're probably what give resolutions a bad name. Real resolutions should more properly be set in the spheres of wisdom and personal growth.

Real resolutions are behavioral and spiritual.

One of the reasons I started TOP more than 15 years ago is that I wanted there to be a little oasis where at least gratuitous negative energy was kept mostly at bay. Where casual and needless snark and scorn and casual provocation wither from lack of nourishment. By and large we do pretty darn well, you and I. But there is certainly no shortage of negative energy out there in the world.

So my resolution for this year is to work on improving tolerance. Although this is at root basically a spiritual goal, there are many concrete ways I can work on it. One, for me, will be to be as mindful as I can be of negative energy—not only to recognize when others are dumping it on me—and work on tolerating them when they do—but to be more aware of the situations in which I am tempted or led to dump it on the heads of others.

...And to clean the house. But let's not get carried away!

Mike

P.S. If you haven't yet, see the Update in the "Random Excellence I Dare Not Show You" post. We heard from the photographer.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dan Khong: "Talking of resolutions, for the first time in my life, I made three in 2017 that can never be broken, and I am still planning on doing these three this year: 1. Every month, to give some money to deserving people (who I don't know). 2. At least once a month, to invite different people (who I know) out for lunch and have conversations. 3. To journal."

David Lee: "I really enjoyed this. Except for the word 'tolerance,' which I don’t like because it gives me the impression that being tolerant is a way of telling myself that I am a much better human being than the rest and because of that I have to understand their limitations and try to, well, tolerate them."

Mike replies: Except that that's the core of the problem. Perhaps without the value judgement (your "much better than").

Aren't we all in actuality little egotists whose Universes center on our own heads and whose interests are more important to us than those of the strangers we rub up against in the world? It's a decidedly human tendency to think everything's "all about us." I do think tolerance is a matter of consciously trying to understand and have patience for other viewpoints. I've been trying to remind myself on a daily basis that a.) I'm no better (but also no worse) than other humans; b.) that other people are dealing with their own challenges and resentments and "understanding with their own understandings," which may cause them to behave in ways that are distasteful or disagreeable or simply mystifying to me, and that I need to let them be themselves; c.) I should resist the urge to try to control others, because I'm not in charge and nobody appointed me to be their policeman; and d.) to remind myself, when other people do things that I don't like, that I also have behaved badly at times in the past so perhaps I shouldn't judge. All of those reminder-thoughts, I would argue, as they become habitual, increase my tolerance and help me take it easy.

Tolerance has a real benefit, too, one that's frequently hidden from our concept of it. We humans naturally tend to internalize things  and exaggerate in our minds the significance of our own actions, status, standing, etc. Accepting that it's not "all about us" makes it more clear to us that it's actually all about them—! In other words, we can more naturally or habitually "not take things personally." If Person L in the example above were truly tolerant, her reaction might be along the lines of: wow, this fellow has had a bad day. He's lost control of his emotions and he's acting crazy. Poor fellow. He's going way overboard in defending his selfish interests. He really must have a lot of stress in his life, etc., etc.—and perhaps then she would not be upset by him at all! So (in the context of the post topic) she'd be immune to his negative energy.

Anyway it's been my observation that the most tolerant people I know are slow to anger and aren't easily upset or nonplussed. Tolerance helps them be steady and calm.

How to Buy a Pool Table: A Beginner's Guide (OT)

For those of you who are interested, here's my guide to how to go about buying a pool table. As ever, I'm mainly a reporter here: I listen to and read experts but I'm not an expert myself. Note that this Guide is for the U.S. If you live outside the U.S. I can't be of much help.

Sunday Support Group: TOP Stew For You

For the singletons amongst ye, the bachelors and bachelorettes, herewith a morselette for your delectation I will but seldom assay...a recipe, fer cripe's sake, that even non-cooks can cook. Generally I am aware that I should be giving no one cooking advice. This exception proves the rule as the saying has it.

After six months or so of scrupulous veganism, I started eating a little meat again in about mid-May; at first, about once a month. By late September or so I ramped that up to one serving a week.

That's plenty. Meat is not good for you. Well, it can be, but only if you're critically short of stored fat and/or starved for protein...which probably describes 99% of the individuals in the hunter-gatherer prehistory of humanity but might not describe as many as 1% of us modern-day Amurricuns.

Get back to the off-topic topic, Mike—step down from that soapbox before the mob drags you away and beats you to death with keto-friendly Slim-Jim Giant Smoked Meat Sticks™.

Here's what to do for TOP Stew: take half a red, orange, or yellow bell pepper and half a purple onion and chop them coarsely. Slice five or six white mushrooms. Then cut a four- or five-ounce tenderloin filet into stew-sized chunks. Throw it all in hot non-stick frying pan over medium-high or high heat with no oil and stir-fry for seven minutes. Season with plain old salt and pepper to taste, and Bob's yer uncle.

It will cook neatly in the moisture from the veggies and 'shrooms—you don't need to add oil or anything else. In fact, when the pan starts getting dry, that's when you know it's done.

If you like your meat a little less well done, wait till minute six or five on the countdown timer to throw it in.

This is about the simplest thing I've ever cooked—so simple, in fact, that I can do it. Fast and easy. I have it about once every two weeks. And it's delicious. (That's one thing meat is good for—yes it's bad for health, but it's savory.)

Even cleanup is simple. 

A once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence
I think this might literally be only the second recipe I've ever published on TOP*. The other one, for a 15-bean soup, was posted more than a decade ago!

So this might have to hold you till sometime after 2030. I do hope you have other sources for recipes.  :-)

À votre santé!

Mike

*UPDATE the next day: Not quite. There have been a few others. Suffice to say this channel is not the Galloping Gourmet!  :-)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Luke: "Oh, whew. I was getting pretty tired of bean soup."

Moose: "Try this: 1 Tbsp cornstarch; 2 Tbsp Soy sauce (well, really, wheat-free Tamari); 1 Tbsp Asian fish sauce (Red Boat is great!); 1/2 Tsp Sriracha or so, or anything you like to add just a little flavor. It's not about hot. A little Worcester sauce doesn't hurt, either. 1/3 cup water. Mix into a slurry. When the food is almost done, pour into the pan and toss. The heat will thicken the cornstarch, making a wonderful sauce coating the other ingredients. (Eschew white 'shrooms. Go Crimini!) Consider making a double-size batch. After at least a night in the fridge, it will taste even better reheated."

Sunday Support Group: Coat of Paint

It's been quite a week. I went off my diet and gained five pounds; my screen time on my iPhone and iPad went from my average of two hours and a few minutes every day to more than six hours and twenty minutes a day; and it wasn't all bad, because I got more work done around the Ponderosa than I normally do in any given month.

I'm just bragging, but check it out:

Pretty sporty, eh? Every acre of flat wood decking in the back of the house got two coats of solid deck stain. The balcony (right) as you might even be able to see, really needed it.

Four takeaways from that:

1.) I have no idea what the difference between paint and solid stain might be. The stain I used looked and acted just like paint. Maybe you know and can tell me.

2.) I don't have the stamina I used to—after about an hour and a half of applying paint—sorry, stain—in one stretch, I really wanted to go sit down. All my life I've been learning, in experience, the meaning of long-familiar literary terms, and I think I'm beginning to know what "bone-tired" actually means.

3.) For three whole years I've had hanging around here the three of the gallons of stain I used for this project, which shows you how long I've been meaning to get this job done. But then I ran out, and when I had to go buy one more gallon to finish up, it cost fifty dollars. Fifty dollars for one single gallon of stain! Is that the pandemic price? They do say that peoples' conception of money tends to calcify at around age fifty, and that we get more and more out of touch with the current prices of all sorts of things as we get older. So maybe that's what's happening. Like many things I read, though, I don't know whether that's true. I always take what I read with a grain of salt so to speak. But it might be true.

And finally,

4.) Fall is perhaps not the best time to stain decking. At least not when the wind is gusting and your place is surrounded by trees. But each time the little locust and the great big sycamore leaves and the the pine needles seemed to be getting the best of me and it looked like it would be be sensible to quit, the wind would die down. Saturday, second-coat day, was much more calm, fortunately.

That light
A while back, a reader wrote a critical comment (I don't get too many of those, but some) that said (I'm paraphrasing): "Stop taking phone pictures of your backyard!"

Which made me laugh. Guilty, I will admit. I like where I live, and I spend a lot of time here looking and enjoying. One thing I've noticed about the Finger Lakes is that that the weather doesn't give you a chance to take nature for granted—it's always reminding you how beautiful it is.

As I painted—stained—the light was just gorgeous. I stopped to pull out the phone and take a few snapshots here and there, just to celebrate the light. I've been struck all year by the contrast between what a miserable year it's been, in all kinds of ways, and yet what a beautiful year it's been here where I live. Even some of the rainy days have been lovely. I guess I won't show you any more phone snaps of my backyard, though. It would only exasperate that reader (and he's right, I probably am ruining my brand).

When I finished the decking, I went back to the store and got some spray paint to touch up the patio furniture. I guessed at the color and hit it on the nose! I just guessed they would have used Rust-Oleum spray paint so I just picked the closest color and bingo, perfect match. Sometimes you get lucky. 

Anyway, I feel like I did something this weekend. It's curiously revivifying. Small victories, for sure, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment. It's an outward sign of taking care of things. It's a renewal. A refreshing. If you're feeling down in the dumps, I can highly recommend finding something to put a coat of paint on.

It felt good.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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Featured Comments from:

Painty Umbo: "When I got back to the Midwest from Washington D.C., after my Dad passed, and in order to keep an eye on my Mom, there were, of course, zero employment opportunities for an advertising photographer (which is why I left the Midwest in the first place). I knew a fantastic photo retoucher who went into custom painting for the same reason, so I helped him out. I learned a lot about painting! After my Mom passed, I also ended up working for a short time at the Lowe's paint deck, mixing paint and helping people pick the right coatings, before I got my next image-management gig out of town.

"1. The quick difference between deck paint, and pigmented wood stain, is that for the most part, paint stays on the surface, and pigmented stain seeps into the wood surface; a better 'lock.' If I was painting fresh wood, or a deck that had been covered with pigmented wood stain before, I would most definitely use the stain. If you're repainting a deck that is mostly already covered with paint, the stain will never seep in, and may even have less 'life' because of that! 2. You said it brother, I was painting in my 50s, and this was after years of running around as a photographer, and I had to stretch and do minor calisthenics in the morning, if I even expected to hobble back and make it into the tub! You never see a fat painter! 3. Quality coatings are expensive! You might be getting gouged because of the pandemic, but, old-time painters used to tell me: 'all the money is in the can.' Unlike brand pricing for perfumes, etc., a $16 can of paint is way crappier than a $45 can of paint! Expensive paints coat better, dry better, lasts longer, and have less fade. The designers we used to work with always seemed to specify Benjamin Moore, and that was $40 a can 15 years ago! 4. Coatings of any kind work the best between about 55 degrees and 80 degrees, whatever season that is!

"By the way, one of the things I learned from the stain reps that used to come into Lowe's is, 'lay off the power washer'! For some reason, power washers became the toy of choice for a certain kind of suburban 'Ken,' and they tear the hell out of deck wood (or any other wood). There are deck washes that you apply, do minor scrubbing and lightly hose off before staining. Every time you power wash, you take about five years off your deck's life!"

Sunday Support Group: Vote

This post contains my endorsement for President in the U.S. election on Tuesday. If you don't wish to read it (which I understand), simply do not click past the page break. I'm not allowing comments on this post and there won't be any further posts about politics.

Back to photographs tomorrow, with a photo-essay of my visit to a Mennonite cabinetmaker out in the countryside.

Sunday Support Group: Look What Came

I'm always impatient waiting for deliveries...but look what came. The official "COVID Annis Horribilis" future pool room / photobook library. It's unfinished inside, so there's a lot of work left to be done, but it sure is nice to have it in place. Now I can get the electrician in here and start making plans for the interior finishing. Inside, a pool table goes in the middle, and bookshelves below the level of the table-top can go on all four walls (all I need is clearance for the back of a cue at table height. Below that level I can put furniture or bookshelves). This will finally enable me to get my photo reference library out of the boxes where they've been slumbering, inaccessible, in the barn for the past five years. I don't know which of the two I'm looking forward to more. 

The purpose of the pool room is to get me through "isolating" this Winter. I'm sure I'll be fine, but I've really been dreading it. Like everyone else, I sure can't wait for this contagion to either go away or somehow have its teeth removed.

Eventually I'll put up one of my little documentary photoessays about this whole process—I've been taking pictures right along. The delivery yesterday was really interesting. Daniel Yoder jockeyed the box into position by himself, using a trailer that had its own retractable wheelset that he controlled with a remote control like a kid with a drone. He was able to delicately set the box on a dime, right where it was supposed to go.

I'm off to Geneva (New York, not Switzerland) to look at things like flooring, ceilings, insulation, and wall paneling.

This is "Sunday Support Group" for this week because I'll be taking tomorrow off instead of today.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Peter Wright: "You appear to have bought the 'anti-gravity' version, so you will need to get the pool table in soon to anchor it down."

James: "Very nice! But won't it be difficult to level the table with that much tilt to the building?"

Sunday Support Group: Woo-Hoo! Past the Impasse (OT)

I've thrown my back out. Day three.

Everything that goes wrong is an opportunity to learn or practice how to handle it. You can have gratitude in the face of anything if you look at it in the right light. (Sometimes it's difficult, yes.)

In this case, it revives my compassion for people forced to live with chronic pain. Never-ending pain must be wearing on the body, but also on the soul and one's peace of mind and mood; it must make it doubly difficult to maintain a steady, mild outlook and a pleasant frame of mind. As in the famous "Chinese water torture," I imagine it might not take much; what would get to you is never getting any relief, never getting a break. I've had renewed sympathy for those suffering such afflictions over the past few days. I'm grateful I don't have to live with pain all the time.

I've been through this before with my back. It's so difficult to remember not to lift things, especially off balance or out of symmetrical position. You're right there, the job is in front of you, it needs doing, and you feel fine. So you just do it.

With me, at least, the trouble might follow a day or two later—I'll do something innocuous and blang! With a sudden, familiar, unmistakable twinge, my back's out. It's very distinct when it happens. I remember once playing frisbee once in the park in D.C. for hours one Sunday. The next day I was standing talking on the pay phone (that dates it) down at the 7-11, and shifted my weight. That was all it took. Crutches, then a cane, three weeks in all. Or was it six? Maybe it just seemed like six.

Weighty matters
Meanwhile, some good news. I'll be doing a deep dive into my 2020 eating experiment on the 19th of December, which will be the experiment's one-year mark. In the meantime, though, a little update on the weight front—

I learned last year that, in empirical studies, researchers found that those who lose the most weight weigh themselves twice a day, morning and night. So that's what I've been doing. (You can do whatever you want to, so don't feel obliged to defend yourself to me. I'm not the boss of you.) It's interesting data. One thing I've learned is that weight loss is a matter of fits and starts. I'll lose some pounds, then hit a plateau and stick there for a while.

Anyway, most recently I've been stuck at just above 200 pounds for almost two and a half months, the longest plateau I've experienced yet. My body just wanted to maintain that, and seemed to be sticking to it doggedly.

In reading about it, I learned that in most cases, compliance is to blame. We think we're still 100% on the diet, but actually we've started to cheat a little, and then a little more, and then a little more. Strengthening compliance is what's needed then. One key for me was getting rid of added table sugar in my morning oatmeal. I couldn't find a way to eat oatmeal without sugar. I just never liked it any other way. I tried banana slices, but that didn't do it. And although I eat blueberries every day, I don't like them in oatmeal.

Finally I learned the trick. In a separate bowl, I mash a ripe banana with a fork. The more you mush it, the more liquified it becomes. When it's good and soupy, mix it with the cooked oatmeal along with a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon. (I use old-fashioned Quaker Oats, mixed 1+2 with water and microwaved in a much larger bowl for six minutes.) Along with six ounces of a berry and mango smoothie with lots of goodies in it (ground flax, a little turmeric root, a few whole walnuts, etc.), it's a nice, easy, enjoyable breakfast.

Anyway, if you've been trying to "healthy up" your eating and your effort is in the doldrums, try evaluating your compliance. Look at everything carefully and figure out if you're getting lax or have given yourself permission to cheat in some way. For example, maybe you decided to eat meat once a month but you've slipped into indulging three or four times a month. Maybe you tell yourself you're walking three times a week but when you study your records you find that sometimes you do it only twice or even just once. I suspect I'm going to need to "tighten up my program" every so often like this as I go forward.

I first saw 1xx on the scale a few days ago, and I've seen 196 once. I really hope I've left the 200's behind. Back on track again!

Mike

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MikeR: "Back out = six weeks. At least it is for me. But, as you say, each time it is a lesson...some folks live in pain every day. One thing it does make me feel is old. Even when I was forty or fifty, having to use a cane and shuffle along and walk gingerly made me feel as though I were eighty.

"I'm keenly interested in your diet exposition, having been fighting a similar fight. I'm finding that it is very easy to kid oneself into believing that one is eating what one says one is eating, and not getting the exercise one is proclaiming that one gets. ('one' happens to be me.) Best wishes on the back spasm recovery."

Mike replies: Thanks. Heating pad right now.

Dan Khong: "You said, '..those who lose the most weight weigh themselves twice a day, morning and night.' That describes me. I thought I am the only obsessed one. Thanks for the thumbs up. Without a weighing machine—a cheap one will do—weight management is impossible by guessing."

Mike replies: You need data!

John Camp: "I broke my upper right arm on July 24 and since then, the pain has been diminishing, but constant. It's not bone-break pain—the bone has healed—but the scar tissue around the torn muscle and surgical incisions. I have to stretch that tissue out, and work on that daily, or I'll never have normal range of motion, which is pretty critical if you're right handed. (If you want to throw a ball, or swim, or lifted things off shelves above your head.) The physical therapy itself creates the stress that results in the pain. I've been told that a couple of more months of PT should do it, but the inability to escape the pain, even with fairly heavy doses of painkillers, drives me crazy. Even sitting absolutely still, unmoving, in the most comfortable position, and I still hurt, not terribly, but in a nagging sort of way. I didn't whine too much the first month, because I figured, you know, break your arm, it's gonna hurt. I may have whined a bit more the second month, because it was really starting to drag me down. Now, I don't know how my wife lives with me—I'm grumpy all the time, I whine, I make excuses for not doing things that I really probably could do, because of 'the arm.' Chronic pain sucks."

SteveB: "Good luck with your back, Mike. I've had occasions when my back went out. The first time it was just bending over to pick up a tie I had dropped getting ready for work—bent over and there was no way I was going to straighten up—had to shuffle over to the bed and sit. Went to the doctor and he said time was the main thing—I had to grab both sides of the cubicle I worked in to stand at work for a while but in time it went away. Then I had back pain for years; it just kind of grinds you down over time. In the end it turned out it was from a kidney stone; after having the stone blown up and it passing, I haven't had that kind of back pain in years. But just the other day I did have another back pain/spasm that took about a week to work out.

"My wife has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was 19 (we're both 68) and that's a constant and sometimes debilitating pain she's lived with. She says you just do things in spite of the pain, otherwise you wouldn't be able to live. She has had both shoulders replaced and one knee. She's an amazing woman."

Mike replies: There was a girl in my photography program whose mother suffered from chronic back pain. I never met the mother, but our friend described a semi-invalid who was "grumpy all the time" as John says, never in a good mood, always angry or needy, and who was sometimes in agony. It sounded like the pain was almost a fourth member of the family, another character in the drama. Pam's description was vivid. It made me really appreciate the difficulty of living with chronic pain. 

Nigli: "I've had back issues on and off since I was about 23. What has worked best to prevent it from reoccurring is going to the gym, 2–3 times a week, and doing core strength work. I takes about an hour to an hour and a half per sesssion. I could do many of the same exercises at home, but I don't. So to the gym it is."

Sunday Support Group: You Have to Adapt

I think as you age, you have to be willing to make adjustments.

Two illustrations of that from my own experience...

A couple of years ago I had an episode of atrial fibrillation, an irregular, speeded-up heartbeat. I went to the hospital and was treated as an emergency case, making a very expensive trip in an ambulance to Rochester for what used to be called an angiogram and is now called a cardiac catheterization. Subsequently I imagined I was feeling something awry with my heart and it occurred to me that maybe my caffeine habit—two mugs of fresh-ground coffee every morning—might be exacerbating the condition. So I performed a little self-experiment. I stopped drinking coffee for three weeks. Then I resumed again.

Sure enough, I felt my heart was better during the weeks I wasn't drinking coffee, and then worsened again when I resumed.

So that was it. After years of drinking coffee, I let it go. Simply stopped.

MJ, Environs of Oak Park. Taken from the driver's seat on a very cold day when Xander was zero years old and riding shotgun in his carseat. No wandering on foot! Olympus 50mm ƒ/2, Kodak Tri-X, printed on 11x14 Agfa MCC.

You would think that after 45 years of daily coffee-drinking I would miss it, but I haven't. I simply accepted that I'm too old to drink coffee now. I drank it for many years; I enjoyed it; and now that time has passed. "So, okay," as David Vestal used to say. Not that big a deal. Life is impermanent—life is temporary. Why shouldn't coffee-drinking also be?

The back nine
I'm having a little more trouble giving up my longstanding interest in stereos. At the end of last year I got the bug to put together a real, freestanding stereo music listening system again (after listening mostly on my desktop system, and a bit in the car), and I got halfway into the process when I noticed something alarming, which was that listening sessions with my newly-fledged stereo seemed to be making my tinnitus worse.

Or so I thought. Was the connection real? Or was I imagining it? I did the same experiment—stopped listening for several weeks, then started again. The tinnitus got better, then worse again. This trial-and-error was interwoven with several visits to the ENT and an auditory test, which I get done every year anyway.

So that's it for me and full stereo rigs, alas. My hearing in my left ear is beginning to go, tinnitus is starting to be a problem, and I need to protect my ears.

That's a loss. I've loved stereos—the music, but also the gear—since I bought my first setup at age 16, to listen to my Beatles, Neil Young, Monkees*, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Elton John, and Pink Floyd records on—but that time is over now. I'll be offloading my stereo gear, old and new. (There's quite a lot of it in the house, not because I collect or "hoard," but because I'm too lazy—and too miserly, if I'm honest—to jettison old stuff.)

I'll still listen to music, of course, but at "normal conversational volume," in the near field, at my desk. That's what I've mostly been doing for years anyway.

I've told you before about my friend Norm, who unfortunately I haven't seen since COVID-19 hit. Norm is 95, yet he still plays golf twice a week in the Summer. He has scored below his age a handful of times, on full-length courses, and his friends say he would do so more often except he sometimes runs out of steam halfway through the back nine. Which is understandable. I also used to run out of steam halfway through the back nine...

...On par-three courses, when I was a mere stripling of fiftysomething. Bah-dum-pah. (Norm wins!)

I asked Norm a while back what the most difficult part about playing golf at his age, and he said, "I have to continually make adjustments because of changes in my body." He's a natural athlete, blessed with good balance. He's pretty nimble, too, despite his years. He's a competitor, too—pool, the game I play with him, isn't his game, but give him a whiff of the winning line and he ups his game, a terrier on the trail of victory.

(If you haven't guessed it yet, I want to be Norm when I grow up.)

I have it in the back of my mind that I need to think about changing my photography in some fundamental way, too. For many years I would take a camera and a few extra rolls of film and take long walks around the cities in which I lived. Even after Xander was born, I would bundle him into the car and go out with the camera, hunting pictures I could take out the window from the driver's seat. Sort of a car-bound version of my regular habit. As he grew older, I resumed my old ways.

I don't really do that any of that any more. But I haven't really found another way of working, either.

I'd like to think that I'd adjust my photography to suit the times, my age, my changing interests, my ebbing energy, my subsiding ambitions—and do so as readily, and with as little sentimentality, as I stopped drinking coffee. Just because I need to, because it's time.

You have to adapt.

On the other hand, change comes when change is needed. Maybe it's not time yet. Still, I'm on the alert, looking for a way to refresh my photography. It needs energy; it's not moribund, but it's been lagging. In looking for a new "way to be," I hope to think originally, be creative, and, especially, to be open to new ways of thinking and of working, not too bound to the past or to hidebound ideas. You shouldn't necessarily keep doing something just because you've always done it that way.

I don't know what I'm going to do, if anything. But I'm keeping it percolating in my mind. I'm going to keep thinking about it, keep looking for a way to reinvigorate, re-commit, and recharge.

Forward to the future!

Mike

*Right, but the Boyce-Hart tune "Last Train to Clarksville" is still a great 'sixties pop song. Though not as great as "Paperback Writer," which inspired it.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Dogman: "Monkees: My favorite song by them was 'Daydream Believer.' It was years later when I discovered it was written by John Stewart, the great folksinger and formerly of the Kingston Trio. I still find myself humming this song early in the morning. Stewart was a great songwriter and singer. Even after his voice was gone in his later years he made some fine recordings."

Ken Owen: "The band was lousy, the PA system was too loud, and I wasn't wearing ear protection. While photographing this indoor event I spent too much time next to a speaker (I needed the angles), and now I have tinnitus plus mild-yet-irritating hearing loss in my left ear. I want to save what's left of my hearing so I'm never without earplugs for potentially noisy events."

Mike replies: With me it was a smoke alarm, which went off when I was broiling a filet last year. I had my hands full—I was cooking—and was not able to cover my ears. My left ear was closest to the alarm, about 15 feet away. Then I had to get up on a chair to disable the alarm, again with my ears unprotected. My hearing was damaged on that occasion and has never been back to normal since. The Nest smoke alarm makes SO much more sense. The first alarm is a mild voice warning, at which point you can tell it there's nothing wrong, plus you can turn it off from your smartphone meaning you don't have to get up next to it.

Harry Lew: "Your post really moved me. I used to revel in street photography, big-city style. Now with COVID, there are fewer people on the street. The ones who are there are more prone to punch you in the face. And the thought of walking around for hours mask-clad puts a further edge on everything. Like you, I need a new 'way to be' as a photographer. Until I find it, I'm feeling the loss of who I used to be and what I loved doing."

Aaron J: "The photo you included shouldn't work—but it does. It shouldn't work because the trees visually and jarringly interrupt the house. But, then it does work because the subject isn't the house, but the trees in relationship to the house. The lines of the trees and the structural elements against the gray and white background give it life, I think. I like it a lot. It reminds me a bit of a photo by Sam Abell of Villa Melzi. He places a huge tree trunk right over one of doors of the villa. It's on p. 53 of his book Seeing Gardens, but I couldn't find an online version of the photo to link to."

Sunday Support Group: It Might Not Even Matter How Much Something Costs

Over the years I've been impressed by the extent to which value is determined by use.

It's pretty simple, of course: the more use you get out of something, the more value you get out of its purchase price.

I usually illustrate this with two stories about belts, of all things.

Many years ago I was driving in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. with my mother, and we happened to pass by Neiman Marcus, a high-end department store. Mom remarked that it was one of her favorite stores, and that she had just bought a belt there that she liked. Mom enjoyed clothes and spent a lot on them for much of her life. Well, we got into the subject, and it turned out that she had paid $150 for the belt. I was on my own and impecunious at the time, so this scandalized me somewhat: $150 was a lot of money in the '80s, equivalent to about $330 now. Would you pay $330 for a belt?

She defended herself by saying the belt was probably very well made and would last a long time. I argued that she had so many clothes that she was unlikely to use the belt often enough to see any quality difference based on durability. I wasn't very kindly in debating it, I'm afraid—I hope she forgives me!—and I made the point, too forcefully, that she'd probably only wear the belt three times. Which might actually have been accurate. But even she admitted that she probably wouldn't wear it more than ten times.

As a contrasting story, when I was in high school I got a hand-me-down belt from my father. He'd had the belt since he was in college, so it was probably already twenty or twenty-five years old by that time, although I don't think he'd worn it all that much. He was about to throw it away.

He gave it to me, so my investment was zero. I liked it, and it fit, and I ended up wearing that belt almost every day for the next twenty years. It looked pretty good almost up until the end, when it gave out—the end with the holes disintegrated over a short period of time—it died of old age! The belt was from that period when most of the things Americans bought were made in America and when American-made things were well made and made to last.

So, $33 per use (in today's money) for Mom's belt vs. 20 years of daily use for free. Pretty starkly different value equations!

Worst purchase ever?
One of the worst purchases I've ever made in my life was a gigantic tube amplifier for stereo music reproduction. It cost $2,400 back in the '90s. I couldn't afford it, but I've observed that people who have no money often spend unwisely—they crave self-indulgence and reward just like anyone else. The whole story is long. Entertaining, in a can't-look-away sort of way, but long. The short version is that it was a disaster. I couldn't keep that blasted amp running for more than a few hours at a time, and had to have it repaired at considerable expense and inconvenience three times. I ended up trading it to a dealer for $800 in credit.

But here's where my little allegory gets conceptually complicated. I used the $800 credit to buy a demo pair of Tannoy speakers that the dealer was having trouble moving. Not a lot for a pair of floorstanding loudspeakers. The regular price of the speakers was $1,100. They were clad in black fake-woodgrain vinyl, with real wood (stained gray) on the front face only.

So in the beginning I used to moan that I had paid $2,400 for those cheap-ish speakers. Pity poor me?

But here's the rub...I really liked those speakers. They always sounded fine to me. I could easily hear their flaws, but the flaws were benign to my ears and seldom bothered me. On the other hand, I never stopped enjoying the good qualities of their sound. The speakers were very amp-friendly, meaning that they had a high impedance and high efficiency, and I used them with a variety of amps, including, eventually, a much better-built tube amp. They did well with the low-powered tube amp but actually sounded best with a 40-watt-per-channel "budget audiophile" Creek integrated amp designed in Britain by a guy named Mike Creek. In fact, I never knew what the fuss was all about with Creeks until I used one with my Tannoys. Kind of like the way a small engine comes alive with a superlight car, Colin Chapman's Lotus principle.

I used those speakers almost daily, and for many hours on most days...for more than 15 years. They didn't wear out—eventually I just got bored with them and got a hankering, apparently, to throw some money down the loo (speaking British now). I advertised the Tannoys at the local college for $300, but learned to my amazement that music speakers were no longer something college kids were interested in—quite a change from my own youth in the '70s. I ended up giving them away. But by that time I figured they didn't "owe me anything." Maybe not as off-the-chart high-value as Dad's old college belt, but definitely in the same class.

Rationally, I should probably think of that first tube amp as being a $1,600+ loss (the "plus" is because of the attempted repairs), and of the speakers as being initially a good deal that I later got a tremendous amount of use out of such that they became a spectacular deal. But people are pretty sensitive to losses, and tend to feel them more. So the way I'd much rather think about it is that I traded the bad amp for the good speakers. That's because I got more than $2,400 of value out of those Tannoys, and the usefulness I got out of them made up for the misstep with the disaster amp and then some.

It's the same result either way, of course. But the second way of thinking about it softens the loss I took on the tube amp and soothes the soreness of it. It makes me feel better to think of it that way.

This Z7 might be really cheap but there's no way to tell

Bottom line, though: we actually never know when we buy something whether it's a good value or not! Because we don't know how much use we're going to end up getting out of it.

World's cheapest Rolls-Royce
I've had all of the following experiences with cameras:

—>In one case, I chose a money-saving model over the model I really wanted, and managed to get a very good deal on the cheap model I chose. But, I didn't like the camera very much and didn't use it a whole lot. Good value? I'd say no, even though it was, "on paper," a disciplined, frugal purchase when I bought it.

—>In another, I bought a very expensive used camera (think of a word that starts with "L"), used it pretty hard for three years (I took David Vestal's advice and "wore it," putting it on in the morning and taking it off at night, like my shirt) and then managed to sell it for virtually the same amount I bought it for. Good value? I certainly think so. It wasn't a "good buy" when I bought it—it became a good buy when it turned out that it retained such high residual value.

—>In a third case, I bought an expensive digital camera somewhat against my will, and paid more or less full price even though it was essentially a demo unit. But I "took to it," tended to pick it even when I had multiple cameras in the house to choose from, liked it better after using it for years than I liked it when it was new, liked its output, and used it heavily for years. Good buy, I guess not. But good value, absolutely.

In a strange way, it might not even matter how much something costs. What matters is how much use you get out of it. If you buy a third car and never drive it, is it a better value if you got a great deal on it? I'd argue not. And if you splurge and buy an expensive car, doesn't it become a good deal if you use it constantly for 15 years and it's relatively trouble-free? (Remember this guy, Allen Swift? That turned out to be one heck of a high-value Rolls-Royce to him.)

And let's look at that hand-me-down belt. Had I paid $330 for it, would that have been a bad deal? Even being conservative in estimating, I probably wore it 5,000 times. That's a little over six and a half cents per use. That's cheap. On the other hand, if my mother had gotten 50% off her fancy Neiman Marcus belt, that's still $25 per use (according to my estimate) or $7.50 per use (according to hers). Still not a good deal. 

You might think that something like a Leica Q2 is prohibitively expensive at $5,000—overpriced Veblen Goods! Ripoff! Status symbol!—and a Canon EOS Rebel T7 kit with two lenses is an especially great value for functionality per dollar at $549 with extras. But you could be wrong about that. What if you love the Leica passionately, and it inspires an invigoration of your interest in photography, and you "bond" with it and use it happily for many years until your hands operate it without thinking, until it's as comfortable as old slippers, and you are constantly, consistently amazed and pleased at the quality of your results? And what if, on the other hand, you bought the Canon but disliked and mistrusted the crappy lenses and were continually annoyed at the squinty viewfinder and cheap plastic of the body, such that you disliked using it, eventually went months without unlimbering the camera from its bag, and even began gradually to drift away from your interest in photography altogether? Which one is the better value then?

The key to getting a good deal isn't actually features per dollar or a matter of frugality or a closeout price. The key to getting a good deal, really, still remains in the future when you buy something. Just because something's a "good deal" when you buy it doesn't actually make it high value. For that, it depends on how much you're going to get out of it.

And that part's up to you!

Mike

ADDENDUM: Here's a great backgrounder on Allen Swift and his Rolls if you want more of that story.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Sroyon: "This is interesting to me because my Ph.D. thesis was about environmental valuation, and I got quite deep into theories of, and distinctions between, price and value—more philosophy than economics, in some ways! In your Tale of Two Belts, I think you're focusing mostly on what economists call 'use value,' possibly ignoring 'nonuse value' (this book by the US Natural Resource Council defines and explains the terms in more detail). Economists are increasingly recognising that we can value (get utility from) things which we don't use—pride of possession, for example, or the idea of 'existence value' proposed by the economist John Krutilla. Who knows—maybe your mother got a lot of joy from the rare occasions when she wore that belt, or even simply from knowing that it was there in her wardrobe. Modern economics in some ways is moving towards more subjective (and therefore also more complicated) theories of value."

MarkB: "Satisfaction...that's what it's all about for me. Does this thing satisfy me in some way; aesthetically, practically, financially, emotionally, etc.? The answer drives my major purchases, and explains some odd attachments I have to physical objects. I have a pair of old sausage tongs (!) given to me by my father about which I (only half-) jokingly tell my own son, '...and one day, I will pass these tongs on to you.' They satisfy me in almost every way, particularly when grilling sausages. On top of that, I get to think of my father (who is still alive at 98) whenever I open the cutlery drawer, which is often, and that's as it should be."

albert erickson: "Mike, one of my favorite lines and one that my wife gets tried of hearing is, 'the most expensive asset we own is one we don't use.' This in a roundabout way is what you are saying, and truer words were never spoken. I am in the process of selling via ebay my little X100f, not because I don't like the camera—I do—but I am just not using it. I tend to gravitate to the Nikon Z that I own for many reasons. I am trying to live up to the lifestyle that less is more. It is a goal and one that is very hard to obtain especially if one loves cameras and lenses. Maybe I missed the point of your piece but that is what I got out of the article. Great job, buy what you love but use what you love or sell it."

Terry Burnes: "We place too much emphasis on 'the deal.' Buy a new car and the first thing many will ask is what you paid, what kind of discount or deal you got. Of course this is usually a long-term purchase and no one factors in the ongoing costs of ownership, interest, insurance, service, repairs, fuel, depreciation. You might at most save a few thousand dollars compared to what someone else pays, but by the time you factor in all the costs that amount becomes insignificant. Especially if you end up with a car you're not happy with. You certainly don't want to get ripped off and need to respect your budget, but once those are taken care of you're better off focusing on whether this purchase will deliver whatever you hope to get out of it, not whether you saved a few bucks up front."

Ilkka: "Your story on prices of belts brought back memories. When I was a student I needed to buy a new wallet. Old one had broken. I went to a big department store and found two that I liked. One cost about 40, the other 150. I sort of liked the 150 one better, but the cheaper one was also okay. I took out my old wallet and looked inside. There was 150 inside my wallet. I figured that if I spend all that on a new wallet, I don’t really need it because it would be empty. So I bought the cheaper one and put the remaining 110 inside. Happy."

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "For some reason, this brings to mind my high-school economics teacher, who, when we would complain about the price of something we purchased, would say: 'Well, you bought it, didn't you? So apparently the price was what you were willing to pay, otherwise you wouldn't have bought it!' I've thought about that many times over the last 50 years when making, or not making purchases."

JG (partial comment): "When I was an audio-fool, I never bought any component new-in-the-box unless I had absolutely no choice. If I bought something from a dealer or manufacturer, I would always buy the specific sample I heard, because it was the performance of that particular component that formed the basis for my purchase decision. Maybe there was a better performer inside a box back in the storeroom, in which case I lost the gamble, but there was also zero risk of ending up with one that performed worse and there is some peace of mind to be had from that.

"Of course, [perhaps the best approach] is to have a very good friend who always has the latest gear and will let you borrow it for a week or two to test it yourself. I am fortunate to be in such a position, and [this has] likely saved me untold thousands of dollars over the years, either by steering clear of gear that doesn't work for me or buying used gear with a known history and proven performance from a friend instead of rolling the dice on eBay or buy-and-sell forums and buying it from a stranger."

Howard: "Guess the Rolex Submariner purchased in 1977 for $278 and still own was a bargain."

Stephen Scharf: "So...what was the tube amp you bought?"

Mike replies: Melos High-Current Triode ST-125 From Hell. It's possible the last bit was not part of the official product name.

Sunday Support Group: Long Winter (OT)

Are you at all worried about the coming Winter? "If I'm honest," as the British say (I like that expression), I am. A bit scared of it, even.

Don't get me wrong: I live in what is for me one of the nicest places in the world. For five months out of the year, and maybe part of a sixth, the Finger Lakes region is my kind of paradise: relatively unpeopled, low-key and civilized, beautiful, with beautiful skies and clear air, and waterfalls, even. Mennonite and Amish farms blanket the countryside, and vineyards cover the hills. I imagine I might also like other places in the world—I remember Bimini being nice, and I liked Ireland—but among the much smaller subset of places I can afford, this is my personal idea of a fine place to live.

Except in the Winter.

In the Winter, the people leave and the clouds come. The deli down Route 54 shutters till Spring, and so does the Windy Acres produce market. Whole towns around here all but close down (I'm looking at you, Hammondsport). Once the leaves are mulched, the whole world turns gray and brown from its crown in the heavens down to the cold ground—wet, sunless, barren, lonely.

Normally I do okay with this. I go to up to eight(!) AA meetings a week and have several regular dates playing pool with friends. Last year, we made 13 out of a scheduled 20 APA (American Poolplayers Association) League nights before the pandemic got in the way. This year, however, what with COVID-19, I won't be going to in-person AA meetings, and the Brock's Bowl owned by Kurt and Kiley Brockman where we often played pool last year is closed, and there will be no League nights.

More than that might go wrong. My mother is in year nine of Alzheimer's and is no longer certain who I am when we talk. A dear old friend is dreadfully sick. My dog Lulu is superannuated and in her dotage (she's 14) and might up and die on me before Spring; the country of my birth could continue its pell-mell race to authoritarianism. (Remember, the opposite of liberal is not conservative; progressive is the opposite of conservative. The opposite of liberal is authoritarian.)

I had my yearly physical last week. At least that went well. My MD is a guy named Robert Anderson. He's a smart guy and a good diagnostician, and if I could type as fast as he can I'd be rich, and I'm not kidding—the guy types faster than most people think. He's worried about this Winter too. "I'm afraid some people are primed to make some bad decisions," he said.

Rash and drastic
So maybe I've done a rash and drastic thing. A few weeks ago I took out a small bank loan to buy a shed. When it gets built I mean to stick a pool table in it. I've really been sorry that I haven't had a pool table here at the house since COVID started; I swear I'd have been practicing two hours a day. Maybe three or four. I find it relaxing and distracting, in much the same way many people mindlessly play video games or vegg out in front of the TV (I haven't had a TV since 2013 or so).

It might seem like an indulgence. Maybe it is. But only mostly. It has a practical aspect. Nine years ago, my doctor back in Wisconsin asked me how long I sit at the computer in one session. The answer was two or three hours, at least, sometimes as long as six—I have no reason to get out of my chair other than to go to the bathroom or take the dogs out or wander to the kitchen to get something to eat.

"You just can't do that," he said. "Find a reason to get up and go do something. Every half hour if you can, but every two hours at a minimum. Something to get you up and moving." 

"How about a pool table?" I asked.

"That is not what I had in mind!" he shot back.

"Wait a minute, Doc. Think about it. I'd have to get up and go walk down the basement stairs. Throw the balls out on the table, knock them all in. I'd be on my feet, moving around, bending over, twisting into various positions...repeat that a few times, then back to work. Ten minutes out of every hour. Why does that not sound good?"

"You know, now that you put it that way, that just might work!"

So I asked him if he would write me a prescription for a pool table.

He laughed, grabbed his prescription pad, and started writing. He showed it to me, then drew it back. "This could potentially be used for insurance fraud, so I can't actually give it to you," he said. He tore it up.

I was only going to frame it and put it on the wall next to the pool table.

Fresh air
Anyway, a pool table is no panacea. It's not going to make COVID-19 go away, and it won't keep my dog from dying on me or the Trumpocalypse from continuing. It won't help with isolation. But what it will do is get me up and away from the computer, out of the house and into the fresh air (the shed will be a short walk from the house), and on my feet and moving around for ten minutes every hour. Before I took out this loan I had no debts other than my mortgage, so that's a step backwards. But I'm looking at this as an investment in my mental health. I only hope it will work out that way!

And I'm one of the lucky ones, I know. I'm not facing dire consequences. I'm not sick, I'm not unemployed, and my life isn't imploding; bad things are happening to a lot of people. (A little hint: gratefulness is the antidote to self-pity. Whenever you catch yourself indulging in self-pity, try to think of all the reasons you have to be grateful. It's like antiseptic. Kills self-pity dead.) But just because other people have it harder than I do doesn't mean the coming Winter won't have its challenges for me too. Just because it could be worse doesn't mean it will be a breeze.

And maybe I'll finally learn to draw the ball....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "I live for winter. I am in Florida, and from Memorial day until ads for pumpkin-spice-flavored (fill in the blank) start running, I'm in my air conditioned house staring out at the heat radiating off of the road. I do 90% of my photography from October to May. Take a camera out of your house in July, and every glass surface fogs as the 90% humidity condenses. I can bypass that problem if I use a blow drier on the lens for several minutes before exiting, but then I have to contend with drenching sweat and heat stress that makes even fun activities hard to tolerate. Today it was only in the 90s... I can feel the autumn in the air. I live for winter."

Mike replies: I sometimes call May–September here "the temperate months." Sounds to me that's what we both like, the temperate months, but which months those are are different.

Robert: "I would be grateful if you let us know what table you buy and why when the time comes. I'm still going back and forth about a table in my basement and would appreciate your thoughts."

Mike replies: It's dangerous to encourage me! I've been threatening to write an article called "How to Buy a Pool Table." I'm a pretty quick study when I get the wild hair and I've been learning about pool tables since 2012.

Dagman: "Re 'Gratefulness is the antidote to self-pity.' I think I'll get this printed, framed and hung on the wall so it will be the first thing I see when I wake up each morning. Thanks for this much-needed pep talk. May this Winter be one for you to remember as the best of times."

MikeR: "Heat??"

Mike replies: The shed is getting spray-foam insulation, underneath the floor and on all six upper surfaces (four walls and both halves of the gable roof) from the inside. Spray foam insulation has a higher R-value, limits air incursion as well as insects and rodents, and contributes to the structural integrity of the structure. Heat will be supplied by a 9,000-BTU Pioneer "mini-split," which is a one-room indoor-outdoor heat pump. It is very silent and supplies both air conditioning and heat.

James Bullard: "I have a 'happy light' that helps with mood (Amazon has lots of choices) and your doctor is right about getting up at least every half hour to hour to stretch and/or do some small exercise as long as it isn't to go get a snack (my weakness). You should start using the light around now and keep it up until the days are getting noticeably long (Feb.). My light is small and sits by my computer. I use it for 10–20 minutes once or twice a day. It sounds silly but it does help."

David Kennedy: "I don’t comment often if ever. But, for me, Winter is a special time for photography. Real deep winter here in central Ontario hides all the imperfections of the landscape, presenting opportunities for a minimalist perspective. Snow drifts are not much different than sand drifts in the desert. I also find snowshoes give you easy access into the forest and are great exercise too. I may be lucky that my county has a number of public forests and accessible trails. I’m not a fan of November and March which are in-between months. January and February can be magic."

J.D. Ramsey: "Couldn't agree more. Pool is more fascinating, at least for me, than playing a video game. Though I must admit that not being of the video game generation—I thought Pong was cool when it first showed up with green balls and paddles on a black screen. But pool involves not only physical skill but gets your mind in play with geometric calculations of how the ball will rebound off the cushion when struck. Truly good pool players, which I'm not, are amazing in their skills. Only hours upon hours of practice could possibly get to that level, assuming one had some physical skill. But even for the rank amateur, it can successfully divert my mind for quite a while."

Mike replies: Bro!

Sunday Support Group: Photo Bloggers Calling It Quits....

"Dance with who brung ya."

—Old American rural country saying

What with Ming Thein moving on, and Kirk Tuck going on hiatus again, and me suffering a bad bout of burnout these past two weeks, I've had to do some soul-searching.

As both of those guys pointed out, the world has indeed changed. Kodak is a shell of its former self; film and the darkroom are quaintly antiquarian; Bronica, Contax, Konica-Minolta (all brands I owned and used) and even Samsung are out of the camera business altogether; Olympus, after hanging in heroically, is headed that way. Digital cameras, among the world's hottest-selling commodities not even a decade ago, are in freefall, blasted by smartphones and the used market as well as by their own sufficiency. Very unfortunately, I can't sell iPhones on my site—that nice arrangement whereby I get a little spiff if one of you buys something through my links still works, but it's not as lucrative as it once was. Prices are way up and unit sales are way down. Canon is talking about market shrinkage of 50% since the peak.

So many paragons of the online photography are gone. Uwe Steinmuller, Michael Reichmann and Roger Hicks had the temerity to up and die; Rob Galbraith, Colin Jago and now Ming have moved on to greener pastures; Ctein departed from here, and Shutterfinger and Imaging-Resource have, well, shuttered. That's just the tip of a bigger 'berg.

And photography is no longer nearly as cool in the culture as it once was. Digital SLRs started out as unobtanium and gradually descended into the realm of the attainable, and everyone wanted one, even people who had never taken pictures on film. Every new development was revolutionary and exciting. Hordes of people were hanging on the news torrent, curious, interested, and ready to get involved. Early on, film-camera veterans, steeped in a mature culture, were admired and respected (sometimes resented, too) by people attracted to the science and convenience of digital. I wrote back then about neomania, the seductiveness of the new. It was a brave new frontier. Invigorating.

All done now.

In 1983 I took a beautiful picture by moonlight. It was a virtuoso trick; I had mastered darkroom craft and I knew my materials well. Walter Elisha, the Chairman of Springs Industries, at the time one of the staunchest supporters of the Museum of Modern Art's Photography Department, requested a print for his personal collection. (It was Walter who provided me with an introduction to the primus inter pares museum curator John Szarkowski.) Last year, my friend Kenny got a new iPhone 11. To demonstrate "Night Mode," he held his phone up and casually took a picture of a moonlit street scene. The tiny cameras (built into a device that will do a thousand other things besides) took a number of exposures and merged them into a single clear, appropriately exposed, noiseless image that was better than I can do with a single exposure with my large-sensor digital camera, much less with Plus-X and D-76.

And how's this now? After years of no problems, recently all of my Affiliate program checks from Amazons in Europe have been bouncing. Or not bouncing, exactly, but they're suddenly worthless. Apparently the issuing banks—the banks the checks are drawn on—are demanding fees to cash the checks in excess of the total value of the checks, or so my bank tells me, so my bank is declining to cash them. Instead, they send them back to me and charge me $35 per check for their inconvenience(!). Amazon in the U.S. tells me to call the Amazons overseas to straighten it out. But I can't call the Affiliate Program of Amazon Germany because I don't speak German. They do speak English in the U.K., but I don't have an international calling plan—on the plan I have it would cost me $125 to make one single call to Europe.

I don't know—I might be reading too much into this—but it seems a lot like Amazon Europe is suddenly saying, "Go away. We don't need you."

Some readers might be saying the same. At least if traffic is any indication. At its peak (which for the record was 2013), TOP was sailing along on 24,000 page views a day. Now, 10,000 is a good day.

And blogging itself is as uncool now as it once was cool. In 2004 it was the happening thing. On a World Wide Web that only a few years earlier had featured single, static pages that never changed, a website that was continually updated with new material was pretty enticing; in the beginning, I got a lot of attention just by existing. That was when internet was spelled with a capital "I," before ads were common, before videos were really possible. Good photo content and information on the web was scarce and valued. And back then, there was a lot of camaraderie between websites—we all supported each other, and sent our readers to interesting things on other sites, which benefited us all.

Now, blog have become...well, not quite antiquated, but old-fashioned. They're very 2010. Competition has proliferated wildly, way outpacing demand. Nothing ever "goes viral" any more—not just because there's too much out there to see and read, but because everybody makes money from affiliate spiffs and few want to lose a reader to another site even momentarily. And all the camera reviews have migrated to YouTube, where independent actors of their own volition act for all the world like PR people for corporate marketers.

Think it can't get worse? Well, it's not just that blogs have gotten outdated. It's that text has. Millennials and whatever the younger-than-Millennial generations call themselves prefer to get their information fed to them through videos. Who reads now? Even the President of the United States never reads anything—not even urgent briefings, apparently. His speech patterns, his very thought patterns, according to experts, are those of a functional illiterate. So he's the leader for our times, then, because the written word is passé. (Tossing French words into written text is double passé.)

So is the handwriting on the wall, my friends? A time of reckoning seems to be upon me. I've thought about it, wrestled with it, agonized over it, and made a fateful decision...

Sunday Support Group: My County 'Tis of Thee

The county where I live, Yates County, New York, is more unusual and interesting than I gave it credit for at first. We are the third least-populous county in the State, but the largest wine-growing county in the United States outside of California, with more vineyards than any other New York county. Although landlocked, the county has a large amount of shoreline—no resource seems to be able to tell me how many miles exactly—on three lakes, Keuka, Canandaigua, and Seneca.

How many waterfalls do we have? You know I have one in my backyard. Like the islands of the Philippines, which are hard to count because some of them appear and disappear with the tides and the seasons*, many of our waterfalls come and go, materializing after heavy rains and disappearing in dry times. So the county has uncountable waterfalls.

Nationalists, I suppose, might say we have an immigrant language problem—but it's not Spanish, spoken in the home by 1.5% of the population, it's German (and Pennsylvania German and Dutch), spoken in the home by 5.5% of the population**. They're Wenger Old-Order Mennonites, and they've been in the U.S. for hundreds of years, although most in Yates County have been here no longer than 50 years, having come by way of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania starting in the 1970s.

I originally thought little Mennonite kids were shy, but it's more likely they didn't understand me—they don't begin to learn English until they're around five, I've been told. Tidy and thriving Mennonite farms dot the county, and their horse-drawn buggies and bicycles (in any sort of weather), are a common sight on the roads. There are two telltales of an Amish or Mennonite farmstead: washing out on the line to dry, or no cars to be seen.

I'd love to do a project on the Mennonites, but they don't like having their pictures taken. I'm more concerned with being respectful of people's wishes than I am about getting pictures. I'm sure if it were a certain photojournalist I know, I'd make a forthright appeal to the ruling body of elders, talk a good case, and in no time flat come away with blanket permission to photograph everybody in the congregation, and then in another month be friendly with 20 families around the county and before you know it have 30,000 exposures in the can. But he's him and I'm me, and you know what they say: Oh well. 

One of my first experiences as a wannabe photojournalist was photographing a Vietnamese refugee camp in France. The photographer I was with went around amiably snapping pictures everywhere, but multiple people requested we not take pictures. When we went ahead anyway, some responded with hostility or disapproval, and others would hide their faces, or their children's faces, if they saw the camera pointed at them. It was highly uncomfortable for me. I couldn't do it. After trying for a while in a decidedly half-hearted way, I put the camera away.

As with many things, you're kinda stuck with who you are. (I've always felt that most photographers gravitate to subject matter that's comfortable for them to shoot given their individual personality and psychology. Not everybody can shoot everything.)

I went to town early this morning and saw three Mennonite women all dressed up in their good go-to-meeting clothes, dark blue full-length dresses and bonnets, on bicycles. They were pedaling determinedly between one stoplight and another, side by side, with a car in front of them and a truck behind. From where I sat in my little sedan, going the other way, I was looking up at them as they approached, so my viewpoint made them look slightly imposing, in the way that a lower viewpoint when taking a portrait is meant to make the subject heroic.

It was quite a picturesque sight; but the picture got away.

Mike

*The number is somewhere between 7,107 and 7,641.

**Of course it's not actually a problem, and neither is Spanish. As with all non-English speaking immigrants throughout our history, older newcomers tend to keep speaking the language of their youth, whether it be Russian, Yiddish, German, Spanish, Polish, Mandarin or whatever, but their children born here speak English, whether they also speak their parents' and grandparents' language or not.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rob de Loe: "Thanks for an enjoyable Sunday read with no fewer than two good personal connections. First, I work in a part of southern Ontario (Waterloo region) where there's a strong Mennonite population with deep roots, so I know of what you speak. My 'tell' for the Mennonite farms is the absence of power lines. Another quirk is local shopping plazas that have sheds for horses; people from out of town have a hard time getting their heads around the concept, but hey, everyone needs groceries. For a second personal connection to your post, I've been working on a project about ephemeral and intermittent streams, and just finished a shot of a tiny intermittent waterfall. It only forms when we've had a major rainstorm that fires up the otherwise dry creek."

Chuck Holst: "Few people think of Lawrence Welk when they think of immigrants—and he wasn't one—but Welk grew up in a German-speaking community in western North Dakota and didn't learn to speak English until he was in school. My father's baptismal certificate is in German, though he never learned to speak it, but his grandfather's gravestone is entirely in German, and therein lies a tale: When my cousin Tim and I were looking for our great-grandfather's grave, all he knew was that it was in Zion Lutheran Cemetery in northeastern South Dakota. He found a Zion Lutheran Cemetery on the map, but we were unable to find any Holsts there. A young woman and her grandmother came by and asked if they could help. We explained what we were looking for, and the grandmother's reply was, 'Why are you looking for a German in a Norwegian Cemetery?' She gave us enough information, though, that we eventually found what we were looking for."

Dogman: "During the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, I was sent to do photos at an Arkansas camp where a large number of the Cuban refugees were being housed. I accompanied several reporters and we spent about four days at the camp. When we arrived there was a bus leaving to take media into the men's section of the camp almost immediately as we walked in. I jumped at the chance to get on the bus but all the reporters wanted to wait until after being briefed. That was probably the wise thing to do for the stories but by getting started with photographing early on I managed to get some pictures that I would not have been allowed to take if I had waited. Oddly enough I didn't have a chaperone to guide me around, I wandered around on my own—probably not the safest thing to do at the time since these folks had not been screened and there were a few guys with questionable histories present.

"I was surprised that most of the people were open to being photographed. There was a language barrier but with a gesture I could ask if it was okay to take pictures. A questioning look would usually get a nod in return. Sometimes someone would shake his head or walk away. That was okay...I had no intention of forcing myself on them. In large groups, I simply pointed the camera and started shooting but gave the subjects time to move away if they wanted to. I also smoked at the time and I handed out cigarettes until my pack was empty. That probably won me favor as much as anything. It was certainly an uncomfortable situation, not being able to communicate and trying to do the job while also trying to respect the subject's wishes. I think the men there recognized that I was trying to accommodate them and that's why it worked out well in the end. That and having cigarettes."

Ger Lawlor: "According to CalcMaps, I reckon (roughly) that you have around 65 miles of coastline! Regards."

Tom Burke: "I remember reading somewhere that at the turn of the 20th century, German-Americans (i.e. non-Mennonite/Amish) were as prominent In the country as Irish-, Italian- and Scandinavian-Americans—there had been significant immigration of ‘German’ people during the 19th century. Many of them were skilled, too (I gather)—they weren’t unskilled agricultural labourers. Amongst other aspects of this immigrant culture, there was an area of Manhattan known as Little Germany. I also read that in the early part of the First World War, the German-Americans supposedly pushed for US intervention on the side of Germany.

I suppose that two wars in which Germany was the enemy persuaded the German-Americans to lose that tag; I don’t think I’ve heard any present-day American referred to as German-American. Can anyone comment as to whether all the above is correct?

Mike replies: Absolutely, as far as I know. I believe Americans of mainly German descent are the largest U.S. ethnic group. The top four in 1776 were as follows: English, Irish, German, then Blacks of all nationalities; and now it's German, Irish, English, and Blacks of all nationalities.

Milwaukee in particular (where I grew up)—there's a great historian of the city named John Gurda. According to him, there were so many German immigrants in Milwaukee that German was the official first language of Milwaukee public schools until 1922, meaning all the way through WWI. The World Wars put a serious damper on Milwaukee's German identity and German pride, but there's a strong German element there still. Many of the kids I went to prep school with had German surnames.

I found this snippet of John Gurda talking about German Jews and other Germans in Milwaukee:

https://youtu.be/-8Cr7RpnITU?t=253

Here, they go on to dissect the Jewish communities of early Milwaukee. He's written a couple of dozen books and made many TV documentaries, and I'm sure he's discussed German immigration in more depth elsewhere.

Tom, I think you would particularly enjoy a great book called American Nations by Colin Woodard. (It was recommended to me by a TOP reader.) He generalizes a bit to make his points, and the reality is no doubt less clean than his theories, but it's fascinating stuff, and it sure answered some persistent questions I've always had about my own country. He's particularly good on the competing visions of what it means to be American and what "American values" are. Again, his explanations are generalized, but he goes a long way toward explaining in part why we have such trouble seeing eye to eye.

Sunday Support Group: Catch Fire

I know, it's not Sunday, it's Monday. But I couldn't get down to work yesterday.

It comes as a surprise to some of my readers (all of whom are wonderful and above average) when I mention that not every post is for everybody. For example, only 79% of TOP readers are vitally interested in pool. (Estimated.) It may be shocking to people of good sense that as many as 21% of readers could be indifferent to that great sport...and still be above average; but I know they're out there because they blast me with the firehose every now and then.

Oh, I know what you're thinking: "how can anyone not like pool?" I share your bewilderment! Cue sports, as they're collectively called, are my sports. But some people prefer other sports, which I have to say is somewhat incomprehensible. 

Well, life is full of mysteries!

So...what follows is not for everybody.

And I did not come up with this. It was mentioned by a commenter the other day. (Readers make all the good contributions around here). But I can't find it. Yr. Hmbl. Jgglr. (moi) does not keep as many plates in the air as formerly. It was part of the discussion about subject matter somehow. Might have been a private email.

Artist statements...
But (he says, finally getting to the point), here's a simple exercise that can be remarkably clarifying:

Write your artist's statement.

An artist's statement (you're playing the artist in this scenario, and don't worry about the implications of the word) is a short but serious statement of what you're about, what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish, what your concerns are. It describes you as a creator to somebody who doesn't know you. It also (sometimes not so subtly) indicates how you would like your work to be seen by others.

Write it from the perspective of the photographer you want to be, not the one you happen to actually be.

As an illuminating exercise, it will probably be more useful the younger you are.

You don't have to show it to anybody, so go ahead and be a little conceited if you wish. This is one of the rare occasions when being a tad egotistical might actually help.

...And why we won't write them
As I was mulling this over, realizing that very few readers will actually do this, and wondering how I could encourage or inspire a few more of you to take pen to paper, it occurred to me that I should take a gulp of my own medicine and do it myself. So I've been meaning to. For two days now. Seems simple enough.

But have I done it? No.

Well, I haven't yet.

So if you don't do this, well, me neither. So I can hardly blame you if you don't.

Believe
Still, I believe in the possibilities of the exercise. For the right person in the right circumstances (see above about this not being for everyone), it could even change your whole direction as a photographer and ignite your enthusiasm and your commitment. And help your work catch fire.

I should really try it....

Mike
(Thanks to the as-yet unidentified reader who brought this up)

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Kirk Decker: "A few years ago I took a business development class for artists and photographers. A lot of time was spent on writing elevator pitches, grant proposals, budgets, artist statements, and bios. The language in a good artist statement shouldn't be much different than the language you’d use to explain a new project to a good friend over lunch. Galleries, magazines, exhibitions, and art shows are going to want an artist statement, and probably a bio, when they consider your work.

"I have a Google drive folder called 'Artist and About Me statements.' In that folder are several statements in about 15 different lengths and flavors. Lengths range from 99 characters, for art shows, to 300 words and up, for galleries and grant applications. I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I apply for something. I just go to my folder and copy/paste the length and style they ask for.

"Here’s an excerpt from a statement I display at art shows. It's written specifically for those who come to these shows. It invites conversation, and people will frequently ask to photograph it.

I use Film, Digital, and Infrared cameras in my photography.

When I use Film I'm not looking for some sort of Ultimate Quality in film. I'm looking for an aesthetic quality that incorporates the Japanese ideas of beauty as a part of impermanence and imperfection. I embrace film now, for the very qualities that when we shot film (back then) were considered qualities to be avoided.

Shooting With Film is about the realization that perfection is not beauty and that it is our "flaws" that make us beautiful; realizing that our censoring has been self-censoring, all our restraints and hesitations have been self imposed based on our misconceptions of what we see in ourselves. It is about being beautiful in the moment now, never waiting to be beautiful later.

"'Shooting With Film' is capitalized in this statement as it is the name of one of my Instagram accounts."

Steve C: "I think it's a valuable and clarifying exercise. There's value in the attempt whether the attempt produces a successful or useful statement or not.

"A successful statement depends on being able to find the words. And working with words is not often like working with pictures. All artists—which is to say, all people who express themselves creatively — respond to the world around them and to the world within them. The statement is a stab at helping to shed a little light to help orient the viewer.

"The most powerful example I can think of was an exhibition I went to that included found pictures of two children, portraits, landscapes, soundscapes and found objects. It was evocative, and clearly about family and identity, but I couldn't put it all together.

"In the her statement, the artist explained that her sister had been murdered when they were in their early teens, that the story had caught the attention of the media and her sister's image had become the face of a public conversation about predatory violence. This work was about reclaiming her sister and her image as someone real, with shared memories, joys and relationships."

"In that light, the work became immensely powerful in a way that I don't think it could have if the work itself was direct enough to 'speak for itself.'"

Sunday Support Group: Ah, July (OT)

A quote for you. The usual disclaimer here—I'm not an expert on this subject. Just talking about the latest book I'm reading. It's by a gastroenterologist and it's about gut health. The study of gut microorganisms is a new field that's really only gotten going in earnest since about 2005, and one stated aim of the book is to bring laypeople up to speed with what's been going on in the field. Here's the quote:

Diversity of plants is the number one predictor of a healthy gut microbiota
At this point, you probably don’t need me to explain why the Golden Rule of plant-based diversity matters. You’ve heard it throughout this book. This is our anthem. Our core philosophy. We no longer need a laundry list of food rules, we only need to remember to eat a diversity of plants. When you walk into the supermarket, remember: “Diversity of plants.” When you’re at the salad bar, trying to figure out what to add, remember: “Diversity of plants.” “Diversity of plants” should cross your mind whenever you’re thinking about what to eat.

—Will Bulsiewicz MD, Fiber Fueled (p. 181)

(The heading is part of the paragraph from the book.)

The Hadza tribe, a modern hunter-gatherer society in Northern Tanzania whose members eat no processed foods and not even any foods originating from farms, might not have a lot of wealth in the way some of us think about it, but they have something very precious that most of us Westerners don't: they enjoy very good gut health. The typical Hadza gets an average of 100 grams of fiber a day, eats thirty different kinds of plants in a day, and has 30 to 40% more different kinds of microbes and bacteria in their guts than average Brits or Americans do. (More being better.) That's versus a paltry 15 grams of relatively poor-quality (i.e., low-diversity) fiber daily for Americans on average—38 grams being recommended daily for adult males.

Here's an interesting thing I learned from the book. It turns out that when you think you have an intolerance for some variety of plant food, you're right—you actually do. But you're very likely to draw precisely the wrong conclusion from that.

Let's say you think you can't eat beans. Beans make you bloated and gassy. Your stomach burbles and gurgles, and you're uncomfortable. So you very logically think, whew, beans! Bad for me. Never eating those again.

Wrong conclusion. What's really going on is that you have an unhealthy gut—your gut bacteria are depleted, starved out, limited, and your system lacks the flora needed to digest beans easily and comfortably. Why? Because you never eat bean fiber and you have a low level of microbial diversity in your gut. But the solution to that is not to avoid beans...that's what led to the problem in the first place. The solution is to go "low and slow to grow" in Dr. Bulsiewicz's words, and steadily reintroduce bean fiber to your diet to repopulate your gut with the microbes that are missing.

So you get a can of organic beans and dole out just a teaspoon of them on to your salad each day. Start with a very low dose, go very slow, and begin to build up the variety of your gut flora again.

Eat them regularly—a big problem with food intolerance is that we never eat something and then we eat a large amount of it all at once, bombarding our system with something it's not used to dealing with. Go slow and go steady.

After a few weeks you'll be able to digest beans comfortably, and your gut will be that much stronger and healthier.

So that's what people mean when they say "we're all different" when it comes to diet and food. In fact, we all are: it's because we all have a different profile of microorganisms in our intestines.

Enthusiasm
As a read, Fiber Fueled starts rather awkwardly and tentatively. But as soon as Dr. Bulsiewicz gets to the science he perks right up and all but overflows with enthusiasm. He works with patients who have serious gut issues of all kinds, so naturally he goes through all those issues. He makes a convincing case that most of us have guts that are badly damaged by antibiotics, alcohol, and our number one type of malnutrition, namely the critical shortage of fiber in our diets. (The majority of Americans think there's fiber in steak! No. All fiber comes from plants.)

Diversity of plants is his mantra for gut health. Although in 400 pages he goes a little further into it than that. For the most part, I was already doing a lot of what he suggests. For quite a while now I've been in the habit of adding all sorts of different plants to whatever I cook. Little of this, little of that in everything. When I read that part about the Hadza eating thirty different kinds of plants a day, though, I heard that little voice in my head go, thirty! I'll never get to that. So I actually counted. If you allow specific spices to count, as well as different kinds of greens in a salad, I actually ate 28 different kinds of plants yesterday. So I might be doing better than I thought.

Of course, it's high produce season here in the Finger Lakes, so eating plant-based is easy right now. Not to mention very pleasurable. (It's kind of weird to be eating all I can stand to and still be losing weight.) Even though I was already full, I gorged myself on a bowl of locally-grown raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries for dessert a few hours ago—all high in gut-friendly fiber. They melted in my mouth. Heavenly. And there are more for tomorrow.

This season actually makes me a little sad because I can only eat so much. I stuff myself to the scuppers until I can't take another bite, and there's still a cornucopia of fresh produce lined up waiting its turn. I had yellow squash and mushrooms in my salad today, along with about a dozen other things, but the fresh peas are going to have to wait till tomorrow.

So much plantatious goodness abounding, so little room for it all. Ah, July.

Mike

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Sunday Support Group: The S/G Index

You know, it struck me the other day that my "satisfaction/gratification index" in photography hasn't been particularly high lately. I been planning to try some film portraits last Spring and put the project off because of COVID-19, which was a bummer.

There are, of course, all sorts of ways that any particular interest can be satisfying and gratifying. I've heard of a lot of them over the years where photography is concerned. One guy I knew liked getting in his little airplane and going up in the air to take pictures. Another loved testing lenses. Another collected old view cameras. Some people take pictures, but that's far from the only way people enjoy photography.

Such things can be functional and purposeful or trivial and superficial—heck, I like "window" shopping, even (the window these days being the Internet, mainly)—that's one of the things I can find gratifying.

What I'm saying is that it's not really even connected to anything serious...necessarily. It's more like, are the old endorphins firing up? Are you getting the juice? You jazzed? Getting what you need?

I tried this: I stuck a number on it. From one to ten. I don't know if that would work for anybody else, but I seem to have little problem coming up with the number. I seem to have a sense for what I'm getting out of something. I know right where I am. Pool, for me, was up to a 9 earlier this year—I was playing a lot with friends, playing in a league, watching a lot of pool and snooker matches on YouTube, getting some coaching, practicing a lot, and just enjoying the heck out of it. (And I distinctly remember thinking to myself that nothing could stand in the way of that continuing—and then COVID-19 hit and that was that. Funny how we really can't anticipate what the future might hold. No matter how much we might imagine otherwise.)

Music just went from about a 5 to an 8 for me just by starting the free trials of Roon and Qobuz on my computer. I'm loving Roon. I've been getting to bed late because I can't drag myself away from the music.

Jazzed and juiced
As far as photography is concerned—always one of my top interests—if my S/G Index is at a 7 or higher, I'm fine. If it's a 6 or lower, something's gotta be done. That 6-to-7 juncture is the tipping point. A 6 or lower on the S/G Index means my hobby needs a B-12 injection, a little caffeine, some kind of infusion of interest. A pick-me-up.

Lately I'm fine—I shot a lot with the Panasonic GX9 (which I'm going to write about soon) and that did it; it got me out of the house and looking at the world and hunting that elusive next nice shot. I didn't do particularly well, but that kept the Index high enough. The GX9 has to go back to B&H tomorrow.

And looking at readers' prints for the Print Crits is also raising my S/G Index. I enjoy prints.

So I'm okay. Just gotta keep it above 6, which is the level at which the doldrums start to intrude. Whenever one of my main interests gets below 6, it's time for some kind of action.

Hope you're doing well with your own S/G Index in photography these days. If not, time to do something about it.

Mike

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JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Great timing on this post for me. COVID-19 has me at a bit of a crossroads at the moment and it relates to this post. This lockdown has provided me with the opportunity and time for personal photography. I have really been enjoying documenting my world for personal pleasure—home, neighborhood, town, Boston and various places of interest as they look at this moment. My S/G Index for photography is very high: 9+.

"But there is another side that is quite scary. Commercial photography, at least the particular types of photography I do for my clients, has all but disappeared. Up until a couple weeks ago, I sort of kept the concern for the financial peril on the back burner because I was very optimistic that a great deal of the work would return in the fall. I am much less optimistic now. I'm 49 and this may indeed by a life-changing event in terms of my career in photography. I may need to reinvent what I do and how I derive revenue. That's a bit daunting."

Sroyon: "I also go through cycles on all my hobbies, but right now photography is about the highest it's ever been. I've never made any money from photography—even the idea didn't really cross my mind—until recently I sold a print (my first and only one so far) and ran a film developing workshop (pre-lockdown) as an Airbnb experience for which two people signed up. From this month on I'm getting some money to write for two film photography websites. It's only a small amount, but I used it to buy a used Minolta Autocord this month, and next month I'll buy some more paper for my makeshift home darkroom. Earning some cash, however little, to take photographs and write about it—something I like so much I would happily do it for free—is incredibly gratifying. Then again, you probably know all about it.  :-) "

Stephanie Luke: "I cheated and acquired two kittens! Since the heat of local summer has descended on us, I stay inside a lot at this time of any year, even before the pandemic. But having these two furry critters to watch is endlessly fascinating, and getting decent pictures of them as they race around and tussle with each other is a delightful challenge. I am shamelessly besotted, and I don't care what anyone else thinks! They have easily raised my number to an 8."

Mike replies: Cool. Kitty photography is not disreputable, merry jokes I've made about it in the past notwithstanding. Case in point, a famous little book called Ernie: A Photographer's Memoir by Tony Mendoza, a highly unlikely bestseller in both its printings. Tony set out to capture the character of his girlfriend's cat, and distilled a lot of work (play?) into a remarkable document. Thanks to Tony there are at least a few cat pictures in the permanent collections of august institutions such as MoMA and the Met. 

Aaron: "I've noticed that 'window shopping' for photography gear actually tends to lower my S/G index for photography (and I should know as I've done and do way too much window shopping for my own good). I think it gets me focused on what I don't have rather than being attentive to the amazing equipment and opportunities that I do have. And I also think that it allows me an unhealthy imagination about what will 'fix' my photography—the next camera or the next lens will do it! Except, of course, it doesn't."

Mike replies: An excellent thing to know about yourself! So you know one of the things not to do when you're trying to revitalize yourself.

Sunday Support Group: A Peculiar State

I've been reading at a rather ferocious pace during the shutdown. No telling how long isolating is going to last; in my county of 25,000 we've had only 41 cases of Covid-19, and six deaths, and many people here are starting to feel that the pandemic might as well be disregarded. Six deaths is more than we normally have from the flu (that figure in a normal year seems to be zero), so it's statistically significant, and it's 24 per 100,000 people so it's not trivial on a per capita basis either, but...let's just say it doesn't threaten people. It's not unknown for a bad car accident to kill six people. Consequently, a lot of people here are deciding unilaterally that the shutdown should be over.

But back to books. Straight Life, Art Pepper's autobiography as reified by his wife Laurie, led to Malcolm Braly's On the Yard, a hardboiled, naturalistic 1967 prison novel informed by Braly's time in San Quentin. That led to "new journalism" pioneer Gay Talese's interesting but (I thought) overlong 1971 bestseller Honor Thy Father, about the real mafia family that the book The Godfather was partly based on—there are echoes of Honor Thy Father in "The Sopranos," too, once you account for television's tendency to exaggerate.

My brother Scott, after seeing the movie version of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, rechristened it "the unbearable longness of movie." The older I get, the less patience I have for longness in books. My Amazon review for Honor Thy Father says, "Like the old joke about a baseball game—that it's '20 minutes of action crammed into three hours'—this is a very good 280-page book crammed into 549 pages." I emailed to a friend (another editor):

My current book is frustrating me! "Honor Thy Father" by Gay Talese, a profile of the decline of the Bonanno crime family. It's been interesting in parts but I'm rather amazed at how lackadaisical the editing is. At page 361 of 549 Talese has devolved into describing what people wore, whether the ravioli was cooked enough, mundane money troubles in excruciating detail--and he's just spent a page and a half describing how Bill Bonanno, the main subject of the book, stopped in at a travel agency owned by a friend he hasn't seen in a while, and the friend isn't there so he leaves. That's it. No point to the action whatsoever that I can discern, no reason for it to be there. A page and a half?

The book opens when don Joseph Bonanno AKA "Joe Bananas" is kidnapped by gunmen, but what I want to know now is WHERE IS THE EDITOR??? That's the bigger mystery if you ask me. :-)

Once an editor.

I had nothing on deck after Honor, so I started reading Sidney Lumet's Making Movies after Scott Kirkpatrick found that Kurosawa reference.

Movies are like magazine covers. One thing I noticed when I was editing magazines was that everyone and his uncle has an opinion about magazine covers because everyone feels they understand them perfectly well and that the great cri de coeur of anti-expertise therefore applies: "all a matter of taste!" The same is true of movies, oddly. Everyone understands movies and feels they could probably participate in one way or another if given the chance. Me, I don't get it. I don't understand how a single movie is ever made. Even a bad one. It's amazing that humans are able to cooperate to such a degree. How a great movie ever emerges from the stew of difficulties known as "filmmaking" is a wonderment of nature. My hat's off to anyone who's ever helped pull it off.

I watched a ton of movies when I was young but hardly see five a year now. (As you might imagine, I have distinct tastes in the kinds of things I like to see.) The only negative of Sidney Lumet's book is that I haven't seen very many of the movies he references. It's interesting nonetheless.

Relaxing in confinement
One thing I took away from Honor Thy Father didn't show up until the Afterword. The book ends as Bill Bonanno, son and heir of the original Godfather, Joseph, heads off to jail. What the afterword informs us is that jail functioned as a sort of vacation for him—the only time in his life that he he was free for months on end from the stresses of being a mob boss and the pressures it put on his home life. He was free from harassment by law enforcement*, lost weight, slept soundly, and didn't have to hide out.

JPEG of a platinum/palladium print by my mentor in photography, Steve Szabo

The parallel with the present lockdown (you were wondering how I was going to get back to that, weren't you?) seems apparent, in a much milder sort of way. I'm not in jail, but I pretty much haven't been anywhere but the grocery store since March, and I haven't been to a face-to-face social function since then either. My AA meetings are all online, which, sadly, I have not gotten used to. My pool skills are rusting like a DeSoto or an old Hudson abandoned in the woods. As it's Father's Day (and Happy Father's Day, too, to all you dads), I can mention that my son tested positive for Covid, and as he was making his way through quarantine my anxiety manifested itself as absent-mindedness and lack of focus to a remarkable degree. I couldn't concentrate on anything. A peculiar state. I'm slowing down anyway, but during those weeks I could only function with difficulty. It was like I was existing underwater some of the time. He appears to be fine now, and has been counted among the statistics for the recovered. I'm getting my feet back under me now as well.

I'm struck by the fact that this has been in some ways an interesting time of my life. It broke a number of habits, has overhauled my thinking in a number of ways (during the worst of the scare, at the beginning, I made preparations for dying alone, which was a startling new perspective), and although it's boring and sometimes lonely, it also somehow feels like a respite of sorts, a time for reflection and regrouping, for sorting out the important from the trivial.

So I'm curious. I naturally exempt anyone who has been sick (and especially anyone who has lost someone to the disease—dreadful) from this question, but for the remainder of you, is there anything about this experience that has been positive? I know there are negatives, and difficulties, and I know nobody wished for this nor wants it continue. I'm just wondering if anyone has been able to make anything good of this time of our lives, to go with the bad.

At the very least, I'm reading a lot more. I think next I'm going to try Grand Hotel, a big bestseller written in German in 1929 by Vicki Baum that was made into a movie in the US not once but twice, long ago.

Mike

*If you are a law-and-order person and don't think enforcement agencies would stoop to such things, the book recounts an extended episode during which a renegade FBI agent in Tucson bombed(!) various mob targets—with dynamite(!!)—apparently to try to simulate a gang war and stoke public outrage.

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Michael J. Perini: "I hesitate to write this because I am acutely aware of how unusual my experience is, and of how many people are enduring severe hardships including loss of jobs, businesses, and illness and the death of loved ones.

"I live in a semi-rural area of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, more gentrified now than it was 32 years ago when I built the house. I have four adult married children and two grandchildren, one three years old and one two weeks old. Three of my four children live within five minutes of my house; the fourth, with the new baby, lives half an hour away in Princeton, New Jersey.

"So the three closest were part of a strict shelter in place(s) with us. No contact outside the family. My son is an executive chef and was able to have provisions delivered from commercial suppliers. So we cooked and ate commune style, opened the pool early, did lots of gardening and working in the workshop with my grandson. We also made no-contact deliveries to my daughter in Princeton. We are of course worried about keeping us all safe, and are aware that we have been very lucky. We've taken lots of pictures, eaten marvelous meals together, built a sailboat for the pool, and put an emphasis on enjoying the enforced time together. It has reminded us of what is truly important.

"We have made it a point to stay busy with productive things—to 'accomplish' a list of things worth doing inside and outside our homes. I set up a gym for all to use, including me. The three-year-old now asks, 'what's our project today, Pa?"

"We of course want it to be over as so many people have been hurt directly or indirectly by the repercussions of the pandemic. So have we, but it has brought my family closer than we have ever been.

"My Mom always said, 'look for the good.' We have, and we found it.

"Today we were all together for Father's Day."

Mike Ferron: "This whole mess has been anything but a joyful experience for me. A late-in-life job has me working for an essential retailer that has not only remained open but has been beyond thriving through it all. Yeah, they pay us extra, but approximately a third of the customers refuse to wear masks or respect social distancing and the rude ones get vocal when you ask them to back off. So as one who has firsthand direct experience with all this? Here is what I can report. The good people of this world open up and ask others how they are doing. Those who are not so nice? It brings out the jerk factor big-time. I was called to the office yesterday to be informed two co-workers have tested positive. This is all so much fun."

Jerome: "I feel a bit guilty to admit it, but to me the lockdown has been wonderful. All of a sudden—silence. No glass shards, no trash all over the place. Just me, doggo and a few souls. No tourists defecating in the park, no drunks chanting in the night knocking over trash cans and smashing bottles. Nothing. People were suddenly polite, carefully keeping distance. Wonderful. Life got so much simpler, as everything slowed down and came to a halt. There were new smells; it felt like the countryside. Amazing. At night, the only noise were birds singing! And when I walked alone through the streets, billboards announcing events that were never going to happen.

"Yes, I am worried. I have a lung condition, and would likely not survive COVID-19. Same for my elderly parents. I live in a distant city, and if anything happened, there would be no way to see each other ever again. I started to think of my death, and how I could make it easier to those close to me. Not pretty thoughts.

"Life got back to normal in Berlin. Loud, crazy, crowded, obnoxious people bumping into each other. Tourists are defecating in the parks again, and everything is littered with glass shards. It was an exceptional time. I miss it. Oh, and COVID-19 isn't gone—I'm still at risk of dying...."

Robert Fogt: "Mike, I share your wonderment at the art and craft of filmmaking, particularly when it comes to lighting. During my thirty years as a museum photographer, I have often spent hours manipulating bits of light around a single object that does not move, in front of a camera that does not move. When I see multiple characters in motion, in front of a camera that is also moving, and the lighting does not call itself to my attention, my common reaction is, 'how do they do that?!'"

George: "Thank you for acknowledging the chaos and stress of making a movie (or television). It's 12–16 hours per day of anxiety about whether you're making the director/client/producer happy, balanced against what artistic compromises are you making yourself. I'm a cinematographer and run this gauntlet frequently. Many of us DPs [directors of photography —Ed.] fantasize about shooting fine art photography as a career instead: No one to tell you what to do, no divas to deal with on set (actors or producers). If only there was a paycheck in photography to support a family...."