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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No Essay, Just Another Test of the Old Rolleicord III

Greening my bedroom window. Rollecord III w/Spiratone #1 close-up lens, Kodak Tmax 100, 1/10th at f/11, colorization by Gimp Image Editor. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013. (Click on image to see it full size.)

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THE SENIOR HOUSING in which I live imposes quarterly premises inspections, always a bit of an intrusive hassle – part of the many punishments capitalism inflicts on those of us who are poor and therefore deemed unworthy of full citizenship. Usually I manage the preparation without too much disruption. This time however it's different  – not the inspection but my physical condition (an unusual combination of simultaneous upper and lower  back problems) – and it's just about all I can do to run the vacuum cleaner,  much less the bending and stretching associated with a full-fledged dusting, mopping and general tidying-up. (The obvious question is why don't I do these sorts of chores more regularly. The answer is with my spinal condition – four damaged disks and deteriorative scolioses inflicted by a 1978 encounter with a habitually defiant, politically protected drunken driver [19 DWI arrests, all dismissed or pled down to nothing before the son-of-a-bitch nailed me], and now since maybe 2006 arthritic inflammation of every vertebra in my spine – any such activity is painful as hell. Indeed my doctors think it's a miracle I'm not permanently in a wheelchair. But by doing major housekeeping only once per quarter  it's only painful as hell four times a year.) In any case this time the "discomfort,"  as the medical people like to call it, is a lot worse than usual. As a result, I'm hurting a lot more than usual,  the cleanup is taking a lot longer than usual, and I find I have neither the time nor the inclination to write anything of substance. But I'll be back next week, Goddess willing and the creek don't rise. Meanwhile here's another of those test pictures I made last month, the geezer photographer with his geezerly old Rolleicord and an astonishingly sharp Spiratone auxiliary lens.   

LB/14 June 2013

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