Transitions

     Three weeks ago, I tossed a handful of dirt into my friend’s grave. His casket had just been lowered into the hole. The gesture was my final goodbye. Our friendship had lasted since boyhood.
     Since that burial, I’ve attended a wake and a funeral for two other people. Tomorrow morning I’ll attend yet another burial.
     Contemplating so much death in such a brief span of time is depressing. A pall of gloom hangs over my head.
     Earlier in the year, before this wave of deaths, I walked by a cemetery. A cluster of balloons floated through it. The sight was unusual. Balloons announce celebrations. Those harbingers of joy share nothing in common with a location that stands for death.
     Or so I thought.
     I noticed words on one of the balloons and moved close to read them. The words congratulated a graduate. Chances were, a family had thrown a backyard party for a high school senior. The balloons had flown from the party into the cemetery.
     The balloon photo offers me perspective in my mourning. The key word here is transition. The balloons were transitioning across a neighborhood, the graduate was transitioning from high school to college, and my late friend was undergoing the most mind blowing transition of them all.
     When someone undergoes a transition—a new job, a new home, death, marriage, divorce, and so forth—the effect is profound on the individual.
     But it’s not only the individual that is affected. A transition affects more than the person undergoing the change. When someone transitions, a ripple effect is felt by people close to him.
     Transitions are potent.

Puritan Legacy

     Puritan colonists once labored in my area of the continent. They busted their humps. Their gusto for work coined the term, ‘Puritan Work ethic.’
      That ethos is still practiced. People in New England have a reputation as diligent workers.
      So do folks in the northern Midwestern states. Laboriousness is ingrained in their heritage. Many of the immigrants who settled there were Germans, a people with a reputation for industriousness.
     Hard work pays off. An economic study claims that New England and the Upper Midwest offer the best quality of life in the United States.
     Children in my town attended a Halloween party. It happened outside the Town Hall. A fireman invited kids to blast water from a hose. A girl wearing a Puritan costume (seen in photo) took up his offer.
     Few people wear Puritan styled clothes anymore, but people in this part of America still work hard.

True to Vision

These benches are where Mother Teresa prayed when visiting her convent in New York City.

       Their standards of austerity haven’t changed.
       I visited of convent of the Missionaries of Charity. It’s located in New York City. A nun showed me around. She requested that no photos be taken of them.
      I sought one exception. Would she permit me to photograph a nun’s feet next to a bucket? Each sister possesses one for washing clothes. No washing machines are used.
     She acquiesced to my request.
     Their religious order is flourishing. Convents are located worldwide.
     All to often, success breeds complacency. Standards drop. Creeping lethargy takes root. Organizations fall into decline.
     Not this one. These nuns live simple lives of poverty as exemplified by their founder, Mother Teresa.
     She once said, “If luxury creeps in, we lose the spirit of the order. To be able to love the poor and know the poor we must be poor ourselves.”

High as an Elephant's Eye

     Stalks of corn edged a front lawn in Massachusetts. An elderly passerby said, “The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.”
     I had never heard that expression, so I looked it up. The sentence is a lyric from the song, 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning' composed by Rogers and Hammerstein. It became famous in 1943.
      For several decades after World War II, music bound together Americans in one generation after another. Everybody listened to the radio. Everybody recognized hit songs. 
     Nowadays, music is no longer a unifying social force. Audiences have fragmented. Listening to the music on the radio—a shared experience—has been  supplanted by listening to custom playlists—a private experience.
     The expression, soundtracks of our lives no longer applies to all generations.

Social Exclusivity

Student actors at a school in my town pose for a selfie with a bust of Glinda, after performing in a play.

     I don’t upload my selfie photos to social media. Facebook isn’t my thing. Even this blog—my only foray into social media—shares nothing about my family, relations, and friends.
    Self documentation turns me off. It puts people on guard during conversations. It takes away the exclusivity of face to face interactions.
     I hiked for a day with my niece in the Berkshire Mountains; they straddle the border of New York and Massachusetts. While on summits we didn’t compose selfies for uploading. Messages about our adventure were not posted on social media.
     It was our day together and nobody else's. The things we did, the conversations we shared, and the memories we created, were exclusive to us. That exclusivity strengthened our bond.
     Social media is hot. Self documentation is booming. But I’m not riding that bandwagon. What I practice—and cherish—is exclusivity in face to face interactions with relations and friends. I’m convinced they appreciate my circumspection.

High Hoopster

     What sort of person erects a basketball hoop on a third story balcony? It overlooks an alley in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Boston.
     Maybe the owner shoots baskets with a little kid. Or perhaps the man is a Celtics fan with a flair for the dramatic. Or maybe he’s an eccentric.
     A grill for cooking—not visible in the photo—is also located on the balcony.
     The man is probably an extrovert who’s fun to hang out with, and shoot hoops with.

Talent Before Judgement

     A man prayed alone inside a Roman Catholic church in Boston. Before him stood a display of artwork. It depicted a statue of Saint Anthony facing a painting of Jesus. Dramatic lighting illuminated the scene.
   During the Council of Trent, The Church considered the purpose of religious art. it determined that religious art should inspire people to become ‘excited to adore and love God, and to cultivate piety.’
     Those aims are laudable. The artwork inside the church performed that role.
     I believe it pleases God when artists—and non artists—use their talents on his behalf. All of us have God given skills that can be utilized for good works.
     Soon we’ll die. Everyone of us will learn the extent of God’s satisfaction, or disappointment, or even wrath, for how we conducted our lives.
     Imagine if God asks us, “What did you do with the talent I gave you?”

Flag Watching

     Some uses of the American flag seem appropriate. Others rub me the wrong way.
     While photographing the last couple of presidential campaigns, I noticed gigantic flags at rallies. They struck me as fitting to those occasions. But I think they’re overdone.
     Barack Obama started out his first campaign wearing no flags on his lapel. He received criticism for the omission. Afterwards he always sported a tiny flag. I’m not offended if a candidate sometimes does not wear a flag.
     Last month I noticed a gigantic American flag fluttering across the lane of a highway near Boston. An auto dealership was located there. Their commercialization of patriotism turned me off.
     Lots of Americans, I suspect, pay attention to how their fellow citizens present the flag. They understand that the stars and stripes are a symbol—a powerful one—that promotes social cohesion.