Downed by Wellness: I Felt Too Good to Work This Week

The Wright Park Sprayground: a cooling image, especially appropriate now since we're in the midst of the Puget Sound area's first summer heat wave. I snuck this picture on a rare hot day several weeks ago, my promised gesture of defiance to the hatefully fearful parents who seemingly wanted to lynch me  for trying to photograph a similar scene in the same place. Old-time journalism by an old-time guy: Rolleicord III, zone-focused and framed in the sports viewfinder (how else?); Kodak Tmax 100, f/16 at 1/250th. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013.

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WHAT IF – instead of calling in sick – we lived in a society that allowed us to call in well? "Sorry, boss, I feel much too good to work today." 

In my case it was a too-rare opportunity for some real outdoor recreation, the sort of pasttime the United States, with its institutional hatred of public transport, routinely denies those of us who can't afford automobiles. 

Contrast this nation's uniquely (and therefore defining) anti-transit-user policies with the transit-is-a-civil-right principles that define the civilized world. Then we bring into sharp focus another of the innumerable ways Ayn Rand savagery characterizes USian governance whether at home or throughout its global empire. 

Yes, I'll be back next week – Goddess willing and the creek don't rise. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy the photo – and think about how the USian refusal to build adequate transit is deliberately crafted to inflict maximum punishment on anyone who is poor – how it leaves lower-income people stranded even as it inflicts on everyone else it the de facto tax of buying and maintaining a privately-owned automobile.

LB/28 June 2013

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