Outdoor movie night hosted at church parking lot

Summer get-together during Covid-19 pandemic, masks at hand, as needed

Here and there the cars park to face the inflatable movie screen and sound system. The closest space is cordoned off for people to arrange their chairs without any worry about cars being in the way. Before the sky darkened enough for the digital projector to fill the screen, a rock and roll trio of church members played a few sets of pop songs as church members, friends, and members of the general public began to arrive and socialize, either with masks (especially those with their own health problems, or anxious about any risk caused by bringing Covid-19 back home to others or infecting co-workers) or by keeping approximately 6 feet between each other.

As the pandemic overtook this county seat in middle February, the church's liturgical calendar was complicated by the need to close the building. Fairly soon their leadership arrived at a solution involving drive-in worship: people isolate themselves in their car or truck, then tune into the low-power FM signal on their phone or car radio to listen to whoever is at the microphone, sometimes broadcasting from indoors and sometimes from outdoors. Initially things were restricted to outdoor, in-car, gatherings. Then the Michigan governor made incremental changes to the emergency orders and gatherings out of doors up to 100 persons (in masks) developed. At one point limited indoor worship also was permitted with distancing, masking, and limiting the exposure time. These days there are some worshipers who scatter themselves widely among the pews inside and others in their cars at the worship hour on Sunday mornings. The worship leader makes an effort to broadcast from both indoors and outdoors over the course of the service so that everyone has a chance to see him in person, rather than hearing only a disembodied voice.

The logistics of serving the sacrament of communion was a challenge to overcome. Eventually, they created individual serving size packets for each person taking the communion. The commercial ones use grape juice instead of wine (grape juice that has been fermented). So in the interest of conforming to pre-pandemic customs of using wine, the church crew prepares their own individual serving size packets.

This photo is taken soon after the movie began. The wide-angle lens exaggerates the small dimension of the projector screen. In fact it is the size of a very small house side. All together there were  perhaps 50-70 people attending of all ages, mostly adults, many of them retired or nearing retirement age. By way of concessions for sale, a brightly painted and lit up ice-cream truck was open for business to the left of this frame, near the church entrance. A table on the porch of the church had pop-corn and soft-drinks on offer, too. The evening music group with amplified speakers was playing near the corner nearest the church and movie screen.

Everybody seemed especially grateful for the chance to mingle informally in the warm summer evening, either unmasked and keeping their distance from each other, or standing at the pre-pandemic accustomed "personal space" of 3-4 feet apart.

Sharing food, conversation, and the company of others

2018 community dinner on Thanksgiving day in Clinton Co., Michigan

The community feast started here in 2010 with the idea of a hot meal and traditional menu (turkey, pies, etc) for one and all, whether a big family, or someone living alone. Some cities feed hundreds of diners and volunteers, but for a rural county seat with 55,000 residents across the entire county, the number of meals is 120 to 200.

The concept of "all together" instead of "can't afford the full production of a traditional Thanksgiving feast" was one obstacle that the steering committee persistently worked on. In their news releases and advertising, word of mouth, and the interactions with donors and diners and volunteers the message was stubbornly expressed: this is not a free lunch for poor people, but rather a shared space for all to mingle and embrace the abundance connected with the feeling of thanksgiving.

There were so many operational details to manage in order to prepare the people, the foods, the venue, and the volunteers and diners. Then all leftovers were expertly packed into sets of 4-person meals to be frozen at the local food pantry and given out in the following weeks. Beyond these descriptive details and the history of the undertaking, though, perhaps most interesting of all is the "why" question. There is the nutritional and social satisfaction of the event for all parties engaged, but there are probably deeper reasons to take on the work of staging the public occasion that come from this moment in history here and in so many other urban centers around the state and the union.

Until ten years ago the trends of increasingly isolated, privatized lives were separating people from each other more and more until people, even ones in the same household or family, were living parallel lives and only intersecting briefly at times of crisis or comfort. Around this same time in the early 2000s the power of the Internet reached a point that mobile devices as possessions, personal accessories, status symbols, and functional communication and recording machines made it possible and practical to fulfill the Internet Religious Principle that "information wants to be free" (not owned, controlled, produced by credentialed experts or specialists). Sadly, the related Principle that Google promotes in its company, "Do No Evil," has been less widely embraced. One of the results of making it easy to find information, easy to add your own information, and easy to create fraud is that the price of expertise sometimes dissolves with the touch of a search button. People self-diagnose health complications, sometimes with success and many other times with failure.

There is a belief that information carefully won and organized can be made flat; that hierarchies can be dispensed with; that with enough bandwidth and processor power the entire known haystack can be searched to find the proverbial needle. While that is magical when it works and the electrical supply is uninterrupted, there is a side-effect of eliminating the structures, sequences, priorities, and principles that ruled expertise pre-Internet. By obliterating distinctions and treating all information and the data it rests upon as equal in value, a false sense of confidence (hubris, perhaps) is spreading, and a feeling that nothing matters; everything is the same importance. A society without boundaries may be liberating, but it also is uprooting. Even facts can be dispensed with since every standpoint is relativistic. Anything that is good and lasting in value can freely float to the surface; but so can wretchedness.

So as the already self-reliant, independent, self-referential lives have spread, this Internet capacity for removing boundaries and hierarchies has amplified the unrooted feelings among increasingly contingent, economically unstable livelihoods of so many people in rural and urban USA. In reaction to this observation or vaguely anxious feeling a few organizers and many donors have responded year by year, offering a chance to begin relationships with others in the community known by face but not by voice or name.

Curating your local history - why does the past call us?

local history museum & marker (state historical commission), 48879

This brick house covered in brick-red paint served the health needs of the people in St. Johns, Michigan with three successive medical practices: Drs. Paine, Gillam, and then Scott. Click the photo for full-size view and legible bronze marker text.

This photo prompts the question of what kind of people recognize value, curiosity, or merit in knowing the past and communicating it to others; or more generally of all the currently living residents, what place does the (local) past occupy in their minds, their self-image, and the plans they make in reference to those earlier generations of residents in the area? For a point of comparison there are parts of the world where relatively little changed in status and possessions and aspirations or imagination from one generation to the next. So the separation of past and present and future was not very clear or necessary. And even when the pace of changes goes faster and one generation's experiences and life chances differ to their parents and grandparents, as well contrasting the generations that follow, then the significance of the past-present relationship might not necessarily be emphasized much. After all, in a land with long history and identities adopted from one's family line rather than of one's single-handed, self-making, then the past serves as a kind of unearned, accumulated cultural capital; something that is background like sunlight or air, available to all and abundant in supply with little need to articulate, package, or label. It just "is."

But in an immigrant country it is your achievements that stand for who you are; not your surname, your original property base, or "your people." So in this county seat in mid-Michigan that dates its establishment to 1856, there were settlers from many places to the east and sometimes across the ocean. Neighbors probably did not know your family history or ethnic achievements, so only the fruits of your working and your appearances could identify you in the eyes of peers and even for your own self-image. When there are relatively few generations, and there are relatively many technological changes and world events that punctuate the 150 timeline, then curating a story about the past takes on meaning to some segments of the population, especially for the mainly retired people volunteering at the museum and the ones bringing donations of artifacts, documents, images, and oral histories. In one's elder years, reflecting on the world and one's lifetime is a natural preoccupation; wondering if one has made a positive difference in others' lives and the local landscape. And so, while it is only a fraction of the overall residents in the area who take interest in participating, visiting the museum, or hunting for clues and answers to the past, for these people at least, the local past is vivid and rich with connections to the present and one's own self.

Profusion of twilight cellphone zombie walkers - cell phone game, "PokeMon GO"

trawling the sidwalks to catch Pokemon shown on the mobile phone screen

About a week ago the national radio carried a story of people congregating at odd places and times around San Francisco in pursuit of particular creatures to add to their own phone's collection of PocketMonsters, poke-mon. Thanks to the wonder of electronic (download) distribution of the game, now for a few days I have noticed individuals, pairs or a handful of (mostly school-age) people strolling up and down the mainstreet sidewalks, parks and other locations with cell phone held in front and occasional glances down to detect desireable Pokemon triggered by the phone's GPS location reported.


This video clip shows a few people trawling for the imaginary menagerie at the downtown park where the former train depot was located. https://goo.gl/photos/Suii4VazRyYoyFs59

Some came on skateboards, others on bicycle, car or on foot. Altogether there were maybe 15-20 young people between the ages of 11 and 20 gathered in the fading light of the Thursday night, around 9 p.m., July 21.

Another gas station to feed your car's appetite for fossil fuel

Like some Jurassic dinosaur, the yellow arm of the excavator digs down into the property adjacent to the Kroger grocery store that recently was purchased in order to build a store-branded fuel station to give food shoppers an incentive also to buy their fuel under the same brand name. The height and visual bulk of the machine is maybe the size of a T-Rex and puts the surrounding cars into relative scale, as well as the person in the background.

14 years old - The award ceremony to conclude Middle School, 8th grade

Middle School awards assembly for the 8th grade, the future high school graduating class of 2020

overview, click for full size image (2-frames, stitched panorama)

On the final days of the school year in June, parents and friends are invited to an awards ceremony. At the middle school the 6th and 7th graders meet separately, one after the other, during the school day. But for the oldest students, the event takes place after the workday for most families, starting at 6 p.m. It runs about 90 minutes.

     The program bulletin with spot color on double-sided, single sheet in 7 pitch font size included sets of recipients who paraded onto the stage expeditiously to collect handshake and word of encouragement, plus certificate or other token. Groupings included a locally conceived program called LINKS for peer to peer support, particularly to match confident kids with ones discouraged by academic, social, emotional or other difficulties (73 names, mainly girls).

Next was the Perfect Attendance Awards (missing just 3 hours of the entire scheduled school year (13 names), with one of these asterisked to indicate perfect attendance during all 3 years of middle school. Third came recognition for 8th graders who served as student councilors (6 names). Next were 7 kids who met under the auspices of the local chapter of Kiwanis Club #707 in order to plan and carry out good works in Builders Club. Three students were selected by staff and teachers for special mention in making the school run well, being helpful to teachers, staff, and peers. The academic excellence awards recognize the 47 students who averaged 3.85 during their 3 school years at the middle school. The Foundation for Excellence T-shirts were reserved for the 17 kids whose cumulative GPA for the 3 years was 4.0 (thanks to bonus points; extra credit, and so on). There were 27 kids recognized for doing well in both 2 of 3 sports seasons this past year, and maintaining 3.0 GPA (and being nominated by their coach, too).

Then there was a prize for fundraising prowess (selling magazine subscriptions to family, friends, co-workers brings a partial rebate to the school for its expenses). High sellers were promised either 1000 of tuition at colleges and universities found on a list, or for the very highest sellers the promise was for 2500 toward tuition. The final award was for one boy and one girl at the discretion of the principal, from among nominations made by teaches and staff.

 

Refreshments (cookies and punch) followed after this first hour of clapping and extolling excellence, to be followed by recap photo story of the past 7 months at the school, projected on the big screen in the cafetorium (cafeteria + auditorium: doubles as stage area).

The motto for the school, staff, teachers and students, found printed on the back side of the program page, reads "Working as a team to build the future!" So the sense of direction is what is to come, but depends on the constructive efforts of today, and not a solo effort, but one that joins many hands. The metaphor of construction project can be extended by comparing the durability, safety, and stylish and high functioning results for well planned and well built work, by contrast to the performance coming from shoddy work, lack of craftsmanship, and ill thought through plans. Excelling in one's work and the fruits of those labors can take many forms, particularly among middle school students, where their bodies grow bigger, take on new shape, and identities are tried on within one's reference group and pool of expectations in a given family, community, or school culture. Dream suddenly spring into mind, are inspired by others, or may be sparked by learning experiences of reading, observing, discussing, or completing certain assignments.

     The minds and hearts of these young people often are open, impressionable, and inquisitive. Much like the way a blueprint comes to life at the earliest stages by staking the land and hanging string to mark elements to be placed or built, levels to be straightened, and so forth, so too for young learners - they build their own ambitions, boundaries and self-definition first from gossamer strands which are easily stretched, tried, changed, or torn asunder. A kind word, and encouraging response, and welcome smile all can move the creation of self from the fragile threads to something quickly to grow solid and increasingly well defined; something which others can see, react to, and thus affect the builder's next steps.