Life is Good, so it says

 

Consumer drabness pierced by pithy strings of philosophy like this.

In the dollar store parking lot this jeep displayed a bit of encouragement to anyone who cared to read the text on the spare tire cover, people stopped behind the truck at a stop light, neighbors passing the person's home, or those passing by in this parking lot. Like most aphorism, the short exhortation can be read a couple of different ways: stay true mean could "don't lie or make reality any more complicated than it is already," or stay true could mean "keep doing what you are trying and don't be daunted," or it could mean a compass reference for guiding one's path by reference to the unchanging North Star - hold your course heading.

"Life is Good" is a folk expression to remind others to pause from their stringing, anxiety, and preoccupying thoughts to admire and appreciate the many good things that surround the person, both the ones that are apparent and obvious, but also the things often overlooked or taken for granted. A line of casual clothing also features this friendly line. But seeing it on the back of a Jeep and paired with the "stay true" saying is much less commonly seen.

When daily routines are filled with money, price comparisons, recurring bills to pay, and many temptations urging the person to buy still more stuff, it can come as a refreshing pause to spot a bit of folk wisdom - commercialized or hand-made - and to reflect on the possible meaning of itself, but also as it intersects the person's thoughts in that place at that time; like some spellbound messenger that captures the person's attention for a moment.

It would be interesting to know the kinds of motivations and models that shaped the designer's patterns here. Perhaps there is an earnest wish to tap the shoulder of strangers and offer them some perspective: when times are tough, this keepsake miniature message is there to offer encouragement and a larger perspective on the aggregate of Human Experience. Or maybe the primary focus is to seize upon a compact catch-phrase that will fit on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and tumblers to add a dash of glitter and (potentially cliched, worn-out) sophisticatedness to their lives and (selfie, self-admiring, self-gauging) lifestyles. The driving force in the designer and the layers of management signing off their approval can be a mix of both of these, and others, too.

There is no need to excavate the meanings, though, to read it at face value and enjoy whatever the reader may take away from the unexpected encounter with the message.

How to celebrate 100 years as a small city - 1931 in Lowell, Michigan

 

Michigan cities local history series*, "Images of America - Lowell" (zip 49331)

As part of the 100-year celebration of the founding of modern-day Lowell, Michigan in 1931, only a year and a half into the Great Depression (October 1929) the caption to the upper photo lists the special events and exhibitions organized for entertainment and edification of visitors and residents alike. How different will things be arranged in 2031, by comparison? At the centennial celebration the first day included an ox roast, crowning the Centennial Queen, band concert, baseball game, a hot-air balloon ascension, and a pageant of progress to end the evening with a look back at 100 years. For the second day there was a parade, addresses by dignitaries, a ball game and another pageant. On the last day they held a mass picnic, a reunion of current and former residents, dancing, singing, and exhibits. There is no mention of radio or print journalism gathering stories or special pamphlets and publications, photobooths or the carnival rides and games captured by pictures in this book. But in the time before TV and Internet, the airwaves for radio and the words of newspaper writers helped to document and report stories like these to surrounding towns and villages.

Jumping ahead to 2024 it is hard to imagine all of the same undertakings being expected or allowed to proceed due to caution about large crowds spreading Covid or attracting domestic terrorist groups or mass shooters. The social fabric has a few of the old threads but is largely woven into different patterns to give a much flimsier durability and texture than in 1931. This big event almost 100 years ago presents a kind of mirror for reflecting on the present. What they recognized as 'dignitary' might be more readily understood today as 'celebrity' or 'influencer', for instance. Parades are far less common now that so many people own personal automobiles, sometimes hugely expensive things depreciating by the day. And with so many people with jet travel experience for business or pleasure, the pass of parades is not so interesting or thrilling to impatient and multi-tasking people with fragmented attention spans and weighed down by debt, social anxiety, and dark imaginings about future uncertainties as consumers striving in a race to the bottom quality and prices. With the contagion of Artificial Intelligence echoing back and infiltrating all sorts of unexpected places and times, the task of building and protecting trust becomes all the more difficult.

Like any good history book, this slim set of photos and extended captions stirs interest in bygone times, places, and people. But it also invites comparison to today's livelihoods, aspirations, and range of experiences. On the one hand things change a lot. But on the other hand, the well-worn saying still holds truth, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more that things change, the more that they stay the same). The words change but the song remains the same when it comes to a lifetime of striving, dreams, temptations, stresses and reliefs.

*Authored by Lisa Barker Plank with the Lowell Area Historical Museum

Show me the money - not cash, though

 

Credit card (top) and several digital payment alternatives accepted for online pizza order 1/2024

In the mood for pizza, I noticed the neighborhood kiosk gave $8.99 as the carry-out price for a large pizza with 1-item added. Out of curiosity before telephoning my order, I tried the online order website and discovered the same pizza in the Specials tab for $7.99 so I went through the ordering process there. After selecting crust (original), sauce (original), toppings (normal vs. extra; whole spread vs. half covered in A and the other half in B), it was time to review the order and proceed to the form of payment (above screenshot). 

There are probably many more services to broker digital payment based on smartphone app than the ones above, but this franchise pizza shop has chosen all of these in addition to credit (and debit) cards. These days a few establishments boldly state at the entrance they accept no cash: all transactions must take some form of electronic payment. Probably "no cash" also implies no personal checks, either, since the burden of proceeds being paid in check or cash means that the owner must travel to a bank for deposit, or to pay an armored car to make that trip safely. As one small business owner put it, "all forms of payment have a fee or cost," if not a percentage given up to the app or 3rd party, then the value of one's time and the risk of banking in person. So whether it is the 2 to 4% that the business loses to financial service companies who mediate the transaction, or it is the value of one's own time for record-keeping, taxes, and travels to the bank for petty cash and for deposits, there is always part of the transaction with customers that retailers lose.

Back in the 1950s a few oil companies would issue cards of credit to customers buying gas at a branded, company gas station. Later some department stores issued cards in their name. After that the big banks began to offer their biggest or best customers a line of revolving credit on the monthly billing cycle, a sort of perpetual short-term loan one month after another. As more and more consumers gained discretionary income and mail order (catalog and telephone) shopping expanded, more and more people applied for bank cards; some carried more than one card. Once the battle for sign-ups among banks took off in the 1980s, bigger and bigger incentives to apply emerged. Consumers could cancel one card and initiate another one to roll over balances due and also to collect the incentives available for airline mileage credits, cash-back, sign-up bonus, and so on.

By the late 1980s or early 1990s a new product was invented for telecommunication orders, particularly attractive to people with difficulty meeting credit card requirements. This was the advent of debit cards in which the purchase electronically debited one's checking account almost instantly. There would be no monthly statement with balance due because the payment would have been directly taken from the account holder's funds at point of sale. The old-school credit card in its many guises (from bank, airline, hotel chain, restaurant, catalog merchant, etc) and the newer debit card dominated the field of electronic payment and recordkeeping until the spread of smartphones and apps with a family resemblance to credit cards. 

The first smartphones began to appear in retail stores and online in USA around 2005, but only a fraction of people carried any kind of cellphone for daily personal use, and few could see the appeal or value of a smartphone costing many times more than the older cellphones. But with innovation cycles accelerating, more and more people became used to seeing others on TV or in real life talking on cellphones and keeping one charged up and its subscription paid up. Among cellphone users, more and more bought a smartphone. The idea of misplacing one's phone and potentially exposing to strangers (or hackers) any financial details or personal information kept smartphone users from whole-heartedly depositing sums in a digital wallet, much as app designers and retailers wanted the purchasing pace to speed up. 

During the first years of Covid-19, from spring 2020 into spring 2023, so much of work, school, and personal life was mediated by online meetings and transactions that the presence and convenience of digital money began to enter some of the smartphone users' minds. But for those growing up with coins and paper notes, legal tender backed by "the full faith and credit of the United States of America," the ease of payment was simultaneously the ease of being hacked or cleverly talked into losing control of those funds by various forms of scam, phishing, or fake communications that spoof the name of a trusted friend or family member.

So this screenshot of the handful of contenders for digital payment is an ongoing experiment to see which brand will attract most users, biggest dollar aggregated sales, common use by retailers and the frequent app support they depend on. Maybe 12 months from now the field will narrow, or some of those visible above will disappear through merger and acquisition and a different contender will be in the line-up. Expanding the financial service providers over and over soon leads to "paralysis by analysis" (too much information to think about; too many choices). Maybe a year from now a backlash will see cash return and digital payment disappear. By contrast, urban South Korea and many parts of the People's Republic of China are thriving with digital wallets; doubtless with growing pains, scams, and identity theft, etc, but yet something they press onward to some natural conclusion.

A related transformation in financial matters is the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Some national treasuries (PRC, Central Bank digital currency, USA "FedNow" epayments) are exploring the idea of limited (special context) use digital national currency for paying taxes and issuing monthly social security checks or for health insurance matters (Medicaid, Medicare), as an example. Whether it is consumer transactions face to face and from a distance, or it is financial affairs between citizen and central government, the landscape of payment and storing wealth is slowly changing.

City 2024 budget for social fabric mending and extending

 

from city of Grand Rapids, MI newsletter, January 12, 2024

This morning the city council's newsletter came by email and included the following text.

55 special events on tap now through mid-summer

The City Commission approved $209,085 in General Fund sponsorships for 55 events planned in Grand Rapids now through June 30. The special events sponsorship awards are allocated from budgeted event support/reactivation dollars made available through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). These 55 events are being put on by not-for-profit, non-governmental organizations or people who have applied for funding through the Special Events Sponsorship Program and confirmed their dedication to holding open, free, and accessible events on public property in Grand Rapids that support the City’s mission, vision and strategic priorities.

By making a screenshot and then color-coding the kinds of things worth city financial support, a sort-of mirror shows the aspirations of the elected officials and the perspiration of the community organizations and businesses dedicated to bringing residents and visitors together. Although this typology of events is based purely on imagined content, based on the title of each, it may not be entirely accurate, but does distill some of the ways that modern society can still bring fragmented attention spans and unbalanced work-life conditions temporarily in repair through face-to-face mingling and meeting of others seen in the neighborhood or in other city contexts.

TYPOLOGY OF CITY-FUNDED EVENTS IN 2024

visual, performing art
charity, fund-raising
physical activity
mental wellness
food-centric
parade, visibility
neighbor/community gathering
ethic celebration
market/crafts

One way to appreciate the value of these many kinds of happenings is to imagine a city lacking such semi-structured public opportunities to interact with others in civil society: not work pals nor kin folk, but strangers who share a few basic facts of common environment and shared geography of cultural landmarks and annual cycle of events around the city.

Social observers and commentators describe "social fabric" usually in the sense of wearing thin, breaking or tearing. This metaphor is close to people's skin; it is personal and tangible. But as a metaphor, it points to the intangible layers of recognition, admiration, blame or praise - tacit or outspoken among people of a particular place and time. Social fabric that is strong or well woven can withstand stress and sudden shock, but weaker stuff unravels or breaks altogether. In this sense, the budget allocated for these 55 public happenings encourages participation and spectating by the great and the ordinary. It is a way to expand, deepen, and add detail to previous relationships to add conversations and possibly names to what previously might only consist of passing visual recognition of some of the people around the city. Although difficult to measure or even to give indirect indicators of the net effect of public events like these, surely there is more gained than lost by hosting so many kinds of things in and around the city.

Intersection of ideas, technique, and water of life

 

Long Island Buddha by Zhang Huan (2010–11) at Meijergardens.org

The traditions of Buddhism take many forms in 2024 and have followed many paths for centuries across the societies where practitioners carry out their lives of service and personal development. This large copper sculpture is located on the grounds of the Japanese-style garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With the late morning winter temperature hovering at or above the freezing line, some of the night snow is slowly melting, sending drops of water down the face in the most direct line to the Earth, according to the laws of gravity. So while the face is tilted, the effect is to create lines of meltwater in vertical trajectories across the facial features. 

One way to see this moment captured by camera lens is objectively: snow is melting and moving to the ground. Another way to see this photo is more poetically with supporting interpretation from social science, too: There is a vast literature and organizational culture (religious institutions) and folklore of Buddhism in its various traditions that is signaled by this sculptor's installation in what once had been an apple orchard before being developed as a botanical garden and sculpture park. And while some of those Buddhist things are tangible, there is also much more that is not visible: things like belief, ideals, aspirations, and lessons given by one's teachers. So in the frame of this picture is a hint of that vast iceberg of information, knowledge, and wisdom: a mountain of ideas that is below the surface, huge but intangible.

Turning to the craft of metal-smithing and ways to source, shape, and complete a sculpture in copper, this hearkens back to the time in the human story between the age of stone and the age of bronze (followed by the Iron Age). For a relatively short number of generations, there was a 'copper age' in which all-copper was used for tools and artworks. But by adding tin, then the resulting mix of bronze was stronger and more useful in shaping axes, swords, brooches, and so on. So this photo is not only a reminder of the massive traditions of Buddhism in many parts of the world today and for many generations before (and after), but the picture also points to the forerunner to the Iron Age inventions and innovations; the power of crafting things from hot, liquidy metal. Controlling metal is what much of urban life and hierarchical social life depends on.

Finally, there is the significance of melting snow forming wet streaks on the face of the Buddha represented in copper. On the one hand this religious figure stands for infinite compassion (bodhisattva figures embody this). So the wet streaks could be seen as tears: expressing sadness at the human waste of resources, of time, of goodwill, of trust, of habitats and the many creatures unable to survive when their habitats are spoiled or extracted. Or, more scientifically, the water could be seen as the active ingredient for oxidation, contributing to the breakdown (entropy) of the metal face, a process that will ultimately return the metal to the Earth. Related is the idea that "water is life," since creatures of the planet depend on water to live. By streaking the compassionate one in this life-giving substance the photo expresses the vitality of the Buddha's place in social life and personal growth.

Putting these many viewpoints together, this photo exists as a fraction of a second in the morning temperature rise from the night's snow to the noon melting of most snow coverings. But being meaning-makers by habit and by nature, viewers readily look for or attach meanings to the given facts of melting snow on the sculpted head. Taking a wide-angle view, this scene combines the ideas from Buddhist tradition, the technology history for civilization, and the emotive tears of that most ephemeral life substance - water- that freely moves between solid, liquid, and gas states of being within us and around us. Seen all together, this scene is at the intersection of beliefs, techniques, and impermanence itself: water.  

Cultural contrasts of being kimono-clad in Spoleto

 

credit: https://flickr.com/ogawasan/53436611120 on Jan. 2, 2024

This study in contrasts appears in the daily "explore" selection by photo editors at the FLICKR photo-sharing online service. Stone (cold) vs. flesh (warm), orange vs. white, light vs. shadow, and the cultural contrast of Japanese traditional clothing vs the architectural proportions and materials and details of ancient Greece and Rome. This collage of contrasts adds tension and attention in viewers' minds so that each side of the opposing pairs is amplified or intensified, much as sweet and sour recipes can make for intense flavor experiences. Were the figure an imagined, ideally shaped person dressed in period costume fitting the architecture's ancient root (say, in Roman toga), then the person and the building would be of the same style and period. Little tension or interest would come from that dimension of the picture.

In 2024 the volume of intercultural mingling and the degree of differences do not create the same shock or startling feeling of being out of place compared to 100 or 500 years ago when such intersections were less common or normalized. Many viewers today would be able to identify the cultural origins of figure and of ground. But a few generations ago far fewer would accurately recognize the source cultures. Another change from then to now comes from the presence of (bright) colors present in daily life of the average person. Today there is a riot of color-fast dyes in fabrics, of neon and LED and high-visibility materials including myriad plastics and paints. But 150 or more years ago, most people were rural and saw vivid colors only in the spring flowers and maybe (stained) glass or art on display. These relatively rare expressions of color paled in comparison to the overwhelming majority of muted, natural colors of the lived-in landscape: mud, fields, forests, and fabrics spun in a few natural dye colors. 

Today the sensory environment of the average person is predominantly urban or suburban, surrounded by cascades of color-filled images in still and moving (digital) form, and comprising cultural features and language elements from multiple sources, not confined to geographically local or adjacent origins. In such an ocean of cultural citations across eras and cultures, modern viewers may well take for granted juxtapositions like the one photographed above. Instead of sensing artistic tension and attention, perhaps people looking at the picture today will perceive little more than the abstract expression of geometry, light, and accent color. The scenes is no more than "a graceful lady in some famous building; beauty on beauty to represent a synergy of more beauty than the sum of each of the parts" instead of "East meets West due to global flows of ideas and travel and leisure pursuits." Both interpretations are true: this is an intersection of so many contrasts, but if those things seem unremarkable to modern eyes, then also this can be seen as the additive effect of putting one cultural tradition of beauty together with another one.