Mistwalker
Gold Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2007
- Messages
- 19,020
Apocalyptic Casual
The past seven weeks have produced some unusual...almost-normal-but-not images in our daily environments, where parts of our views are of simply the same sort of things we have been seeing all our lives. Take the above image for example, I have been eating quick meals of prepackaged sandwiches and chips on sidewalk benches in cities since I was a teenager attending MacArthur High in Irving Texas.
Yet in all those years I have never done so in such surreal settings with almost no-one in sight in my view-able area of the cityscape, or so few passers by on the sidewalk in the process. One could almost get the impression that Rod Serling has somehow taken over writing the scripts of our day to day lives.
The scenes at the grocery stores took on a disturbing look on day one of the shelter-in-place order here. Not because of all the people frantically running to and fro, or the empty and ransacked shelves, that was nothing new for me as I've seen that preceding almost every snow storm we've have had in the Chattanooga area since I lived here as a small child. But the sudden appearance of people nonchalantly shopping whilst wearing surgical masks, and whistling humming and singing as they went about their business was certainly a new experience here.
New descriptors like “No-Contact”, “Curb-Side” and “Touchless” so rapidly replacing words like Speedy, Quick, and Freaky-Fast in adds for the type of delivery our corporate eateries and food delivery services will provide illustrates just how quickly companies can adapt to changing markets in damage control measures to minimize losses.
But I think it's important to remember that corporations aren't the only ones who can quickly adapt, and lost profits aren't the only motivators for doing it. I've seen the owners of several of the small companies I do business with sacrifice significant portions of their profits simply in order to be able to keep paying their long time loyal employees, and in some cases just be able to give back to people in need in the communities which have supported them. The lady at the top of the steps in the above image is my daughter's art teacher Susan. She is an asthmatic, at risk, and knows several others. Her immediate response was to begin using her sewing skills to produce masks for at-risk people she knows, for any essential employees that need them, and any at-risk people her friends may know. She does this at no charge to any of those people. Susan's motto is “feed the need not the greed”, and she has given multiple masks to me for at-risk people in my own life.
Seven weeks into this pandemic things actually seem to be improving overall. Work-wear and working environments certainly seem to have become more casual. With people working outside on their patios in casual clothes, with water bottles and adult beverages to hand to get them through their work days with less stress and more relaxation. To illustrate the new normal in their working-from-home environment, a friend's wife recently shared a side view image of him at his desk with professional formal business attire from the waste up, tie and all, and the lower half sporting running shorts and bare feet. I think a lot of us could get used to that.
I personally am very blessed, in the facts that some of my work allows me a good deal of flexibility, and that my daughter is about to turn fifteen years old. So for me, even as a single parent, suddenly being forced into the role of being her teacher as well isn't so bad as it would have been when she were younger or as it has been for some other parents. In fact after seeing some of the improvements in her study methods and grades, as well as in her mood and attitude, after having felt some disappointment in regards to some of the things she had been picking up from some of other kids and even some of her teachers, I am actually considering home schooling her all next year just to see how that goes and see if i can manage to teach her some of the more important life lessons in conjunction with it that modern teachers seem to leave out all together now.
The past two months have definitely seen us experiencing some puzzling views, and have also inspired some very interesting thoughts and questions. Obviously, as usual, we have seen some less than stellar examples of humanity in the over-reach and abuses of power being perpetuated by some individuals in our governments, and in the sheer level of greed illustrated by some corporations. Some disappointing deeds of some who appear much more interested in pushing agendas of personal gain than in looking after the constituencies who put them in power and the markets who have supported them. And I do hope we have learned from that and that we've grown in our understanding of how the world works and in some places do a better job of choosing our representation the next time we're at the voting booths. However overall I have been very pleased to see how we here in our general populace have held onto and perpetuated our humanity so well, and have done so in far better ways than the main stream media would seemingly ever let us believe, and I'll raise a glass to that.
Life is short, even 100 years isn't very long and there is little to nothing we can do to lengthen it beyond a century with any real viability and quality of life. So I tend to have a quality over quantity philosophy in my approach to it, and try to enjoy as much of it as I can. Since we can't make it longer, I sure hope we can at least continue to strive to make it better.
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