All Alone in the Moonlight

Apparently there’s such a thing as crypto­currency. I say “apparently” because I’ve never seen any or held any in my hand — doing so is impossible, because crypto­currency is perceptible only as numbers on a screen. Crypto­currency appears to be predicated on the idea that anything of which there is a limited supply has value, but in this case, the thing of which there is a limited supply is nothing.

As I understand it, the original idea behind Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was a noble one. Standard currency has value because it’s backed by large institutions, such as governments and corporations, in which we’ve traditionally had faith. As we’ve come to trust these institutions less and less (mostly for good reasons), the aim was to devise a medium of exchange that was independent of any corporate or political entity — in other words, a currency that backs itself. (This independence is underpinned technologically by something called the blockchain, which, fortunately, no user of cryptocurrency is required to understand.)

Contrary to their inventors’ intentions, Bitcoin and its crypto-brethren — perhaps because of their lack of ties to stable institutions — have turned out to be wildly volatile, gaining and losing value unpredictably. As a result, they’ve become virtually unusable as an everyday medium of exchange, and instead have become instruments for investment, like stocks or bonds. Unlike stocks or bonds, however, they do nothing to support anything constructive in the real world.

Why am I blabbering on about cryptocurrency, instead of the personal experiences that usually form the core of this blog? It’s because I’ve lately come to realize that personal experiences are, in themselves, a form of cryptocurrency. It’s because after the moment when they happen, those experiences exist only in the form of memories, which — although they may be in limited supply — are essentially nothing.

I, like you, have a reserve of memories locked up in the Fort Knox of my brain. Some of them — the ones from which I can learn lessons — are useful, and those are the ones that I generally write about here. But there are others, equally vivid, that serve no purpose whatever: The smell of the melted-cheese sandwich my mother made in the toaster oven. The colors of the striped polo shirt that I glanced down at while running out the door into my front yard. The feeling of exhilaration I experienced the first time I managed to ride a bicycle without training wheels. The helplessness I felt when my father was mowing the lawn outside while my mother was vacuuming the carpet inside, leaving me no place to go to escape those terrifyingly loud machines.

Memories like those are unsubstantial — they exist (if “exist” is even the right word) only in my head. None of them can be substantiated by anyone other than myself. (For all I know, I might have invented them.) If a solar flare were to suddenly erase all of the hard drives on earth, cryptocurrencies — and any wealth that they embody — would disappear; similarly, when I die and my brain activity comes to an end, my memories will vanish just as completely.

And yet, for no rational reason I can think of, those memories have value to me. I embrace them and caress them, just like the hoarded coins I used to fondle when I was a child. I work each day to make more memories, just as so many of us work to make more money. Why?

I’ve never invested in cryptocurrency, but clearly I’ve invested in memories, which are just as ephemeral. Debra and I are preparing to take a long, expensive European vacation — and what is that if not an investment whose hoped-for return will be added to my mental Fort Knox?

The best spiritual teachings tell us that there is no past and there is no future; all that exists is the present moment. Life, properly lived, is an ongoing succession of present moments, experienced for what they are, with no preconceptions or expectations. Like most flawed humans, I haven’t achieved the ability to experience my life in that way — the best I can hope for is an occasional flash of insight, a fleeting fraction of a second when I can see things as they are. For the rest of the time, I have memories in the bank.

Posted August 16, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Perception
Read Me 3 comments

Deception Reception

If you’ve ever commented on one of my blog posts and wondered why it took some time for the comment to show up, it’s because I have to review them all manually to screen out automated comments from Russia. Unlike the Google chatbot that’s been in the news lately, these Russian bots are nowhere close to sentient — their comments have nothing to do with the post they’re attached to, and they never say anything self-revealing. As a public service, I offer some samples (translated from the Russian by Google), with links omitted:

The most important component in the foundation of a bookmaker’s office are all silhouettes as well as lines.

An extremely important part of your outfit is a motorcycle helmet. It’s more important though that your riding gear fits you exactly and fits your size.

Blackbutt is a unique ecoregion inhabited by many peoples, with snowy mountain domes separating the subtropical coastline.

Although these comments can be informative — for example, I never knew that it was possible for mountain domes to separate a coastline — I’ve never been able to figure out why the bots (or, rather, their human overseers) go through the effort of posting them. Are there really readers who are so interested in a blog post that they go on to read the comments, encounter a comment that is clearly irrelevant and mercenary, and then are so stimulated by what the comment says that they go on to click a link? I want to know who those people are.

I don’t mean to be patronizing here. I understand that there are people who are inexperienced in the ways of the online world and are therefore vulnerable to scams. (I’ll admit that one phishing email was so well made that even I fell for it.) What I don’t get is why some people willingly trust strangers whose intent to deceive is right out in the open. For example, if you receive an email whose subject line says something like “You’ve won our grand prize!” but whose message, when you click on it, turns out to be an ad for generic Viagra, you’ll probably delete it immediately. But the continued existence of such emails implies that there are recipients who instead say, “Haha!  You’ve successfully tricked me into opening your email! Therefore I will send you money.” The existence of such people mystifies me.

Slightly better than the sellers who openly deceive their potential customers are those who willfully annoy them. I’m thinking of the merchants who leave flyers tucked under the windshield wipers of my car, forcing me to (A) physically handle the flyer, (B) read it to make sure it’s not a parking ticket, and (C) carry it around until I can find a place to recycle it. My temptation is always to take such a flyer to the originating business and hand it back, saying “Excuse me, but you accidentally left this on my car, and I’m sure you want it returned,” but that response would only be effective if everybody did it. Instead, there are apparently people who treat the flyer as an incentive to order a pizza, go to a nightclub, or whatever, thereby rewarding the business for wanton littering.

Finally, there are those sellers — generally, but not always, online — who consider me the kind of person who would sell out my friends. “Here’s your personal link,” they’ll say. “Anytime a friend uses this link to buy our product, you’ll get a reward!” In other words, they’re saying that they know that my friend wouldn’t be interested in receiving advertising from them, but that perhaps my friend would be open to getting advertising from me. Even in the rare event that I would really have wanted to recommend a business to friends, this strategy makes it much less likely. (And if I do recommend it to a friend, I certainly won’t give them my “personal link,” which would constitute a clear case of conflict of interest.)

Speaking of recommendations, how do you handle those surveys that ask you “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend?” Even if I really like the product or service, my answer is always 1, because I rarely give friends advice on what to buy. (If they end up being unhappy about their purchase, I’ll feel partly responsible.) I once admitted this in a Facebook post, and one of the commenters got very upset about it. “You just fucked up their performance statistics!” she said, but all I was doing was honestly completing the survey. If the business wants me to give them a 9 or 10, they’ll have to ask a better question.

Posted August 9, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Society
Read Me 3 comments

Getting the Picture

Building the illustration from Parent-Teacher Association

It’s always puzzled me — and, if I’m going to be honest, troubled me — that no one ever comments on, or even seems to notice, the images that accompany these blog posts. A few of them (generally, the ones that are captioned) are actual photos of actual things, but the rest are painstaking handiworks that may take more time to create than the essays that accompany them. Most of them can be clicked on to be viewed at a larger size. (The exceptions are the animated ones, such as the one displayed here, which would take much too long to display at a higher resolution.)

Back when I first entered the media business, when I was still producing filmstrips and slideshows rather than videos, I was hugely frustrated by my inability to manipulate images — particularly 35-millimeter slides, which were the medium of choice for both audiovisual and print publishing. Whatever the camera photographed was what the slide displayed. It was possible to make a color print of a slide, alter it with ink or paint or pieces of other images, and then rephotograph it, but the result always looked flat and phony. Most of the time, I just had to live with my own helplessness.

I should note that I was never very effective in a production environment — my forte has always been post-production. If I hired a scriptwriter, I could rarely describe exactly what I was looking for (often because I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for), so I would take whatever the writer gave me and end up rewriting it myself. If I was directing a recording session with a voiceover artist, I often had trouble getting the talent to read a line the way I wanted it read; instead, I would edit the tape later, cutting together words and syllables from different takes to get the desired result. I longed for the freedom to do the same thing with images.

Moving into video in the 1980s gave me some of that freedom. It was easy to color-correct footage, superimpose one image on another, or juxtapose them by means of split screens. It was even possible to place people or things in different backgrounds through the chromakey process, which involved shooting against a brightly lit blue or green screen. But shooting chromakey footage was expensive, since it required renting a studio, and the resulting composite — which in those days was achieved through fairly primitive electronics — never looked convincing.

My world changed with the emergence of digital photography and digital video around the end of the last century. Photoshop, the industry-standard image-editing program, was created in 1988 and began to be widely distributed in the early 1990s. Although I had a good Macintosh computer by then, I couldn’t afford genuine Photoshop software, so I bought a cheap knockoff called Color It!, which lacked many of Photoshop’s more advanced capabilities but was otherwise powerful and reliable.

My big breakthrough came when I was working on a fundraising video for Catholic Charities of San Francisco. They had a prized photo of the pope’s visit to the city in 1987, and wanted it included in the video, but there was a problem: The large head of a bald priest, with his back to the camera, was prominent in the foreground. Could I do anything about it? I wasn’t sure, but I scanned the photo, brought it into Color It!, and began to play around with the available tools. I discovered that by selectively copying and pasting bits of the surrounding area, I was able to completely and convincingly obliterate the offending pate. That was my start as a photo manipulator.

By the time I could afford the real Photoshop, I was already pretty skilled at retouching, restoration, and compositing. With the acquisition of another (now sadly obsolete) program called DeBabelizer — a little-known, professional-grade, automated editing program with an impenetrable interface — I was able to transfer those skills to video. Eventually I graduated to full video editing and motion graphics using software such as Premiere Pro and After Effects, and teaching community-college students how to use these kinds of software.

Although I’m technically retired, I still do a lot of (mostly volunteer) photo and video editing for a variety of clients. When I’m not doing that, I’m writing and illustrating this blog. My blog illustrations, even the ones that look fairly simple, are assembled from bits and pieces of multiple stock photos. (For example, in the recent image of LBJ riding a tortoise, the president’s right hand actually comes from Vladimir Putin’s infamous bare-chested horseback snapshot.) More complicated images, such as the one of the nonconforming sheep from mid-2021, may comprise dozens of separate elements.

In the world of musical theater, there are some songs that make sense only in the context of a show, and others that can stand alone. The latter are the ones that have a chance of becoming popular. I try, when possible, to make images that can have meaning outside of the blog posts they accompany, and therefore might somehow qualify as art. Most of the time, though, they can only be considered illustrations, since they make sense only if you’ve read the post.

I take solace in the fact that Stephen Sondheim rarely wrote a song that could stand alone — the only exception I can think of is “Send in the Clowns” — and yet is still acknowledged as a master of his craft. I’m far from a Stephen Sondheim, but I’d like to think that some of the images I create might make a difference for somebody, if only to provide a few minutes’ enjoyment.

Posted August 2, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Technology
Read Me 4 comments

Parade Grounds

Every Memorial Day, in my hometown of Farmingdale, New York, the whole community turned out for a parade on Main Street. When I think about it now, the idea of a parade seems as absurd as a fashion show — an event where people gather to watch other people walk. But when I was a kid, it was a highlight of my year. My family would get there early to get good seats (a “seat,” in this context, referring to a place to sit uncomfortably on the curb) and wait impatiently for something to happen. Eventually a police car would roll slowly down the street with its lights flashing, and the crowd would let out a cheer.

Trailing the police car would be a succession of applause-inducing sights: proud police and military veterans marching smartly in step, Girl and Boy Scout troops who hadn’t yet learned to march in step, troopers on horseback, freshly waxed fire trucks, and local politicians waving from the back seats of balloon-covered convertibles. All of these were punctuated by marching bands from local schools, led by confident-looking girls twirling flags or batons. (For some reason, the bands always seemed to play anywhere other than where I was sitting. As soon as they reached my field of view, they lapsed into marking time with snare drums — but even the snap of the snares was thrilling.) Most of the kids in the audience, and many of the adults as well, waved miniature American flags on wooden sticks — this being a time when such a thing could be done without irony by people of all political persuasions.

I remember only one year when I had less-than-total interest in the parade. The local news — conveyed to me only through adults’ gossip — was that one of the stores on Main Street had recently been robbed. For me, that news held a sort of dangerous excitement: A robbery — like the ones I would see all the time on the Superman TV show — but for real, right here in Farmingdale! While the parade filed by, I visually combed the street, trying to figure out which of the stores had been the victim. I don’t know what gave me the idea that I’d be able to identify a robbed store simply by its appearance, but there had to be something different about it, didn’t there?

Finally, in the distance, I spotted a store — well, actually, a bar. It looked pretty normal, except that at the top of the storefront were large, white, three-dimensional letters that spelled “ROB ROY.” I found the orthography questionable, but it occurred to me that if I were a traumatized store owner, I too might pay less-than-perfect attention to the spelling of “ROBBERY.” The rest was mysterious, though: At what point had the store owner put up those letters? During the robbery, to summon the police; or after the robbery, to let the rest of the community know? And how did the bar happen to have those particular huge sign letters on hand? Did they have a whole alphabet stored in the basement? Did every store have them, just in case? I regret to tell you, anticlimactically, that I never found out the answers to those questions.

The ideal parade — the one I would have given anything to see in person — was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Our Farmingdale parades were fine, but they didn’t have elaborate floats, giant balloons, and celebrities like that parade I saw on TV. New York City was just an hour-long train ride away, and I begged my parents every Thanksgiving to take me there. They always responded that it would be too hectic, too difficult, and not worth making the trip.

Finally, one year, my wearied father beckoned me to the car and told me we were going to see the Macy’s parade. Confusingly, the place he drove to was not the train station, but a shopping-center parking lot in some unknown part of Long Island. Adjoining the parking lot was an empty, narrow road lined with a few straggling spectators. I was perplexed.

“This can’t be right,” I said. “The Macy’s parade is in New York.”

“After they finish marching in the city, they come here,” he said.

“All of it? The balloons and everything?”

My father nodded. I wanted to believe him, but it seemed impossible.

“The road is so narrow,” I said. “They’d never be able to fit the parade here.”

He told me to be patient. Finally, a parade did come. Needless to say, it was not the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; it was some local parade, complete with the usual fire trucks and high school marching bands.

I have no idea what my father was thinking. Was he confused, and really did believe that this was an additional stop for the Macy’s parade? Did he know it wasn’t, but think I’d be fooled? Was he just trying to get me out of the house for a while, to give my mother some peace?

Whatever his intention was, it worked. I never again begged to be taken to the Macy’s parade. In later years, my father claimed not to remember the incident. So unlike the letters over the Farmingdale bar, which eventually made sense to me as an adult, the details of this episode remain mysterious. I still would like to see the Macy’s parade someday.

Posted July 26, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Pleasure
Read Me 4 comments

Monkeys, Apes, and Lunatics (2)

(Part two of two)

So-called “gifted and talented” programs have lately come under fire for their inherent racism and classism. No matter what criteria are used to determine eligibility, they tend to underrepresent (or exclude entirely) children of color and children who don’t receive educational support at home. Not surprisingly, the More Able Learners (MAL) cohort of which I was a member was 100 percent white and middle class. (Of course, this was in the 1960s, when “diversity, equity, and inclusion” was not a phrase that was yet in anyone’s vocabulary.)

When we look critically at exclusionary groups like the MAL program, we tend to concentrate (rightly) on the harm done to those who are excluded. But it’s also worth noting the negative effects on the people who are included. Spending our school days, year after year, with the same small group of students meant that we never developed relationships with the others who attended our school — not only those of other races and classes, but even those whose backgrounds were similar to ours, but who had not been given the same rich and intense educational experience that we had. We were set apart, ignored by most students and resented by others.

To be honest, I spent my first few years unaware that this was a problem. I had always been different, even within my own family, so social isolation was the norm for me. But within our class there was a mounting sense of discomfort. Spending our formative years in an unchanging social environment was taking a toll on our emotional development. We were getting on each other’s nerves. Some of us were exhibiting behavioral problems, or were paying less attention to our schoolwork. By the time we were in sixth grade, a school psychologist was visiting our class twice a week to talk with us, leading hour-long sessions that can only be described as group therapy. It began to dawn on me that being special was not all it was cracked up to be.

Our isolation was eased a bit when we got to junior high school (which, in our district, comprised seventh, eighth, and ninth grades). Outside of core subjects such as English, math, and science (in which MAL students were still a year ahead of our peers), we began to take classes with students from outside our program. We were, however, still geographically segregated — confined to a single school, which, in this case, was the less popular and less “cool” of our district’s two junior high schools. A couple of students actually dropped out of the MAL program so that they could be transferred to that other school. By all reports, they remained regret-free about their decision.

Our participation in this grand educational experiment ended when we entered tenth grade. At that time, students from both junior high schools were funneled into our district’s single high school, and the MAL designation was lifted entirely. We were suddenly normal, HR-level students, randomly mixed with other classmates from the school’s 3,000-student population.

For me, that initial encounter felt like what I imagined an anthropologist might experience when exploring an unknown culture. The conventionally-educated students seemed happy and well adjusted, with a thriving social network. They all seemed to know each other. So far as I could tell, they were as smart, capable, and imaginative as any of us in the MAL program. They still could do a geometric proof or dissect a fetal pig, even if they’d done those things a year later than I had. Not having read the Great Books, studied Impressionist art, or seen Marilyn Horne perform at the Metropolitan Opera didn’t seem to have damaged them at all.

I was in the familiar position of being on the outside looking in, but what I was looking at now was an alternate-universe vision of myself — the person I possibly could have been.

I don’t know whether the problem was with the MAL program itself, or whether it just interacted badly with my particular cohort. My sister, three years behind me, was herself admitted to MAL, and she didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects. (Unknown to me, she copied a term paper that I’d written in eighth grade, turned it in to the same teacher, and got a better grade on it than I had.) A few years later, the program was quietly dropped, although I have no idea whether it was for educational, social, or budgetary reasons.

Ever since then, however, I’ve strongly believed that what you learn is not nearly as important as the circumstances in which you learn it. Students who have been made to feel comfortable with who they are, who develop within a social environment based on mutual respect and the belief that everyone has a role to play in their community, are better prepared to make use of whatever education they receive.

Posted July 19, 2022 by Mark S
Category: Education
Read Me 5 comments

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Rose Avenue Logo

Go to roseavenue.com home page

Mark Schaeffer 2021
Vega Wordpress Theme by LyraThemes