Reality Check

There was a lot of buzz about "the dress" this week.

In case you've been off the grid, this was the photo someone snapped of a dress they saw online, and there was fiery debate over whether the dress was blue and brown/black or white and gold. Some people said they saw it both ways. Some said they were sitting next to someone looking at the same screen and they each saw different colors.

Half full or half empty?

What surprises me is how surprised people are about the phenomenon.

Don't we live every day in our own realities? Don't our own perceptions of ourselves and others color everything we do? Two people can watch the same movie or view the same incident and come away with two opposed descriptions of what happened. And how many different religious factions are out there insisting their god is the only one?

Just for the record, I saw the dress as blue and brown. Someone, who took the time to make swatches and check them against Photoshop, came up with blue and brown, too.

So I'm right. Ha!

Except...the original dress, the one that was viewed online, was blue and black.

Oh well. I've always been a little off. Ask anyone, they'll tell you. They just may not all tell you the same thing!

Dreaming of a Green Summer

The past week was brutal. Record-low temperatures, more snow and white knuckle driving were the stories of the day. But I just can't talk about that anymore.

Instead, I find myself thinking about childhood summers.

Riding my bike down a street canopied with maple trees. Flapping against my spokes was the bubble gum card -- either a discarded baseball player my brother didn't want or maybe a bullshit Monkees card with a scene from the show that didn't have any of the boys in it. The one blip in my memory of this is the year we had the cicadas, flying at me from the trees, leaving their discarded shells to crunch beneath my bike tires. (Creepy stuff, but I'd still rather be crunching cicada shells than snow.)

The year I got a hula-hoop for my birthday, just like my sister's. And I shoop shooped my way through summer. Learning how to spin it so it came back to me. 

The teen summers. Hanging out with Linda on her porch (she had a glider) and watching for boys. Especially the guy down the street we nicknamed "Bwam" because he rode a motorcycle. Swimming in her pool. Walking up to McDonald's for a coca-cola or a shake.

Snippets of memories of sunny, warm summer days to push away, if just for a little while, the shoveling that will need to be done a little later today.

It will get warm again one of these days, right?

It's That Day in February

As usually happens with gift-giving holidays, the nature of my work ensures that by the time the big day rolls around, I am thoroughly over it.

Valentine's Day is no exception.

In my childhood, Valentine's Day was a big deal. My mom insisted I had to give everyone a Valentine so that no one would feel left out. I took the box of cards, picked out the biggest/best one for the boy I had the crush on at the time and chose the next-to-best cards for my friends. The ones I thought were nasty went to the kids I didn't get along with, and the middle-of-the road variety were destined for the rest of the class.

Being a child of the Baby Boom era, class size was in the 30-40 student range. So selecting and addressing the cards was quite an undertaking.

I remember walking around the room, handing out the cards and wondering how mine would be received. Some years, if I'm remembering correctly, we decorated a box to take the cards home in.

When my son was in grade school, the students were not permitted to address the cards to anyone in particular. They just signed their name, and the Valentines were handed out one to each student. While I suppose this is more fair, it also seems more generic and less interesting. Plus, it got to a point where they weren't allowed to bring in candy, either, because it wasn't healthy.

Sometimes, I don't think kids today know what they are missing. (Oy vey, listen to me, such an alter cocker!)

Also lamentable is the lack of creativity in today's Valentine cards. There are lots of zombies and super heroes and such, the but the writing on them sucks. Back in the day, the cards were tongue in cheek, with groan-worthy puns and visuals to match.

Oh well.

These days, my husband and I swap cards. He makes a card for me. This year, I made a card for him. I'm going to bake chocolate chip cookies, since it looks like the snow will deter us from heading out.

So we'll hang around, watch a little TV, maybe find a good book and chow the cookies as they emerge from the oven.

 These days, that sounds like the perfect way to spend Valentine's Day!

Snap Shots

There is a photograph of my grandmother as a young girl, which was probably taken sometime in the late in the 1800's or very early 1900's. Her chin is on her fist, and she is gazing into the distance.

When I was growing up, the photo hung in my parents' room, and I would stare into her face for long stretches of time. I wondered how old she was, what she had been thinking about, what her life was like. Her mother died when she was eleven. I'm pretty sure she was younger than that in the photo. I wonder if her mother was sick for awhile before she died, if my grandmother had any inkling that she would not have her mother for long.

I find myself doing that with other old photographs, too. Doineau and Atget with their pictures of Paris. People who lived and passed, but who remain fixed in a place and time because a camera captured them on film. I think about their lives and wonder. What they ate, where they worked, whom they loved.

Snapshots of moments.

In this age of digital over-information, I speculate whether people will try that hard to extract our essence in the future. Or if there will be such a glut of movies and pictures that capture every triumph and tragedy and foolish act, to the point where future earth dwellers will become numb to this generation, what we experienced, and what we cared about.

If I am blessed to have grandchildren some day, I hope they will care. I hope they will look into the eyes of my photograph and imagine my days. And wonder about me.