Category Archives: Concepts

The (Christmas) Tree-Lined Streets of New York

20 Friday Dec 2013

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xmas trees in the city

BY JULIE SEYLER

It’s Christmastime in the city, which means it’s time for annual pop-up Christmas tree shops. The day after Thanksgiving, mini-marts stocked with Christmas trees small enough for a 350 square-foot apartment, and large enough to fit an apartment well over 3,500 square feet, emerge on city blocks. An arbor of evergreen reminding us, through the power of scent, that the year is drawing to an end. Again.

!st Ave and St. Mark's Place, 11:00pm.

1st Ave and St. Mark’s Place, 11:00pm.

And like every other business that seeks to grow, it has expanded beyond Christmas trees. On 2nd Avenue, between 19th and 20th streets, there is a an outdoor mall stocked with wooden soldiers, ornaments and every other accessory for the city-dweller to create the perfect domestic pitch of joy to the world!

Open day and night.

Open day and night.

By necessity, the shops are manned 24 hours, even when it’s 25 degrees outside. Years ago, I had a friend who ran a Christmas tree shop. He set up an electric heater, and three or four beach chairs because friends frequently stopped by to keep him company. While it was cold and lonely at three in the morning, from a certain perspective it turned out to be not such a bad job. It was steady work for a mere 30 days with guaranteed pay, and today this guy is a super successful entrepreneur. Is there a connection? Plus, now that he’s on the right side of 50, this youthful feat of braving the cold night and day to sell Christmas trees makes a great story.

These days, most places come with a heating cube and and air mattress, but that doesn’t mean the sales force can be lax. One morning on my way to work, lured by the glitter and lights, I decided to buy a gift for a friend. I knocked on the heating cube Sleeping in the city and Patrick, bright eyed and bushy tailed, came out. His shift, which had started at nine the night before was just about over. He had not sold too many trees, but he was sublime and optimistic. A shipment had just arrived, and he was pretty sure that by the run of the gig there would be only a few left. He helped me select the perfect ornament.

Patrick Demayo. New York.

Patrick Demayo of Liberty, New York.

So here’s to the ritual of Christmas-tree commerce, because whether you choose to have a tree or not, you still get to experience the greenery that marks the holiday season.

My Pregame Show: Remote Controlling

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

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control Bob
BY BOB SMITH

This past Sunday was snowy and cold, so I decided to space-out watching football all afternoon. First, I gathered the choice parts of the Sunday New York Times – the Book Review, Arts section, the magazine, Automobiles, and Week in Review. Solid, semi-serious reading. Next, the New York Post for comic relief – stories full of blood, sex, political graft, and combinations of the above. Rounding out the reading pile was the Asbury Park Press – good for the Jumble, and to see if any local politicians have gotten themselves mired in New York Post-worthy peccadilloes.

Most important, I assembled the electronic devices I’d need to ensure full control over my environment. First, the entertainment controls: the Samsung TV controller, the Denon controller for the receiver that distributes sound to speakers around the room, and of course, the silver Cablevision device. To watch a cable show, you first power-up the TV, receiver, and cable box by pushing the appropriate “on” button located near the top of each controller. Then you use the Cablevision controller to change channels, and the Denon device to change the sound volume. – unless you’re watching a show through Netflix or some other Internet-based service like HBO GO.

Because my system is wired wrong, and I don’t have the electrical engineering degree needed to sort it out, my amazing Denon surround sound speakers don’t transmit Internet audio. But you still must have the Denon receiver powered up to continue receiving a TV video signal. So for Internet-based programs, you turn Cablevision power off so no cable-based sound comes through the Denon speakers, and instead use the Samsung controller to adjust the sound that’s now coming only through the tinny speakers on the TV. Simple, right?

Then there’s the gas fireplace. This controller is straightforward, with two settings that work like the Human Torch character: flame on/flame off. It also has a thermostat to select an approximate room temperature the unit will maintain by activating an electric blower. I’ve never figured out how to adjust this temperature setting downward, so the fireplace constantly tries to keep our family room at a toasty 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it gets cranked up, you could melt marshmallows within eight feet of the hearth. On football Sundays, we call this the “red zone.”

To counter the red-zone effect, we have the white Casablanca controller, which turns the ceiling fans on or off, and adjusts their speed. You can also use this to reverse the blades’ direction, so if you’re feeling chilly, you have the fans rotate downward to recirculate fireplace heat within the room. And if you want to see if the dog, or anyone else hiding upstairs, may be susceptible to carbon monoxide poisoning, you rotate the fans so they pull the heat upward.

Entertainment: check.
Environment: check.
Next, communications: in case someone calls during the game, and I actually want to talk to them, I also include the cordless house phone in my couchside array. Because our telephone service is provided by the cable company, the caller’s name and phone number is displayed on my TV screen, so I can readily ignore any unwelcome calls, such as telemarketers. That includes the cable company itself, which at least once a month tasks some unfortunate drone with calling to ask if I want to upgrade my service. I could lease a high-end Ferrari if I canceled my current subscription, and used that money more wisely, so I always decline. (Of course, I have a little fun first: “Are you watching the game right now?” “No.” “Me neither, thanks to you.” HANG UP.)

Finally, I have my smartphone on the table. It’s not shown in the accompanying photo because I was using it to take that picture – which is one of its most useful features. If in the middle of the game you feel an urge to take a snapshot of your feet in dingy gray/ once-white gym socks, there it is. Bang. Instant gratification. Then you can message it to anyone you like. Bang. Instant gross-out.

It’s also good for taking calls from people you ignored when their name and number flashed on the TV screen. After all, if someone really needs to talk to me, they’ll follow up with a call to my cellphone. I simply explain that I missed their call to the house because I was out buying batteries for my controllers.

So there I was ready to control my world: video source, volume, channel, picture-in-picture, flames on or off, ceiling fans up or down, phone calls taken or ignored, toes waiting to be sent into the ether for snarky commentary, all the news that’s fit to print, and all the news fit to wrap fish. I had it all.

I fell asleep ten minutes into the game. But I had powerful dreams.

Sarasota Statue a Throwback to When War was Glamorized

05 Thursday Dec 2013

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Bob statue

“Unconditional Surrender,” statue in Sarasota, Florida. Photo by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

Alongside the road by the bayfront in Sarasota, Florida, is a 25-foot-tall statue of a 1940’s-era U.S. Navy sailor kissing a woman in a nurse’s uniform. She’s bent backward with her eyes closed, and one arm dangling at her side in blissful submission to his embrace.

The statue, entitled “Unconditional Surrender,” is a copy of a lesser-known version of an iconic photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstadt.
The date was August 14, 1945, and the U.S. media had just announced that Japan would agree to surrender, thereby ending four long years of war. Japan’s surrender was particularly significant because the Japanese had fought so tenaciously, and had sworn to fight to the last inch of soil if their country was invaded.

Like today’s suicide bombers, Japanese kamikaze pilots found glory in sacrificing their lives to kill Americans. Moreover, Japan had prompted the United States to enter the war by attacking Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 event of our parents’ generation.
Japan’s surrender was likely prompted by our destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 , just a few days earlier. In the world’s first and (to date) only wartime use of atomic weapons, the United States had wiped out two entire cities and killed between 75,000 and 125,000 people, virtually in the blink of an eye. More than twice that number would die from the effects of the bombs over the coming months and years.

But on August 14, people in America weren’t wringing their hands over whether or not our use of the atomic bomb had been justified. This was a day when unbridled joy broke out across the land, and drunken revelers spontaneously poured into the streets of New York and other cities. It was in the midst of this happy mayhem that an anonymous sailor grabbed a dental assistant he’d never met and planted a kiss on her startled lips.

Unconditional Surrender has been derided by many as a kitschy and derivative – journalistic – hardly qualifying as art. However, one World War II veteran with a strong sense of nostalgia, and the bankroll to back it up, felt it worthwhile to pay around half a million dollars to have the statue displayed in Sarasota. So there it stands (at least for a couple more years).

What strikes me about the photo, and the sculpture, is not that they capture a moment that has any direct emotional significance to me; they don’t. What I find interesting is that there never was a similar galvanizing moment in our lives at the end of a war – because the war of our youth, Vietnam, divided the country, rather than united it.

There were gung-ho types who went off to that war in the blind faith that it was their duty to do whatever our leaders had decided was right. There were the hippies and others in the peace movement who demonstrated against the war, and ran off to Canada, or invented exotic ailments to exempt them from the draft. Any young man who was undecided, but nonetheless fit and unwilling to buck the system, was subject to being drafted, and sent off to fight an obscure, unpopular war.

I was fortunate, because by the time I turned 18, the war was winding down and they never called people with my draft card number. But even though I didn’t go, the media images in my mind from Vietnam are far from glorious. There was the wrenching photo of a naked young girl running down the street among a crowd of terrified Vietnamese citizens, fleeing the napalm bombing of her village.

There was the horrific image of a South Vietnamese general at the moment he was executing a prisoner, where you could actually see the pressure and wind rush from the gunshot distorting the doomed man’s face. And finally, there were the photos of Americans lining up to be evacuated from Saigon by a helicopter waiting on a rooftop.

Maybe it’s good that our generation doesn’t have any romanticized images to associate with our “big war.” Thanks to the Internet and smartphones, and the resultant near-instantaneous global communication of words and images, that kind of photo is unlikely to ever be so dominant again. Even an event as happy, and apparently as innocent, as the kiss reflected in Unconditional Surrender would quickly lose its impact in the real-time, You-Tube’d, instant-messaged context of all the horrors that had come before it.

Text Blessaging

02 Monday Dec 2013

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BY LOIS DESOCIO

The vibe out there among technology experts is, that since 2011, text messaging, in many countries, including the United States, is on the decline. (Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for texting, has seen a drop in the millions.)

But the Thanksgiving blessings sent by text (blessages, as I’ve shamelessly dubbed them in my spiked-apple-cider bliss), still remain as much a welcome ritual for me as the turkey that is always too big for my oven, and grandma’s sausage-thyme stuffing.

Facebook and Twitter have contributed to the texting decline, and the novelty of texting wore off long ago. The sending of holiday good-wishes, much like the writing out, and the sending of cards, can become less about thoughtfulness, and more about rote and duty. Perhaps.

But this year, still sleepy, I rolled over first thing Thanksgiving morning to my phone, and to:

“Happy Thanksgiving, my dear friend,” from an old friend.

And an ever-mounting stack continued throughout the day:

“I am thankful for you;”
“Love you, LoLo (emoticon);”
“Gobble Gobble! xoxo.”

text2

I gave back. They kept coming. I gave some more. I started some. A domino effect of collective cyber-love permeated the autumn air.

As someone who insists on unplugging for a chunk of time every day, and often ignores her phone on weekends – much to the consternation of family and friends (Where R U?? Pay attention to your phone!!!) – I can’t get enough of those Thanksgiving texts.

And this year was a banner year for me, so us over-50s (all of my texts were from over-50s) are probably not as burnt-out as the younger set. Some texts were funny; some came with visuals. Some were long; some brief. And some were in snappy, convoluted text-tongue (Hppy THXgving, CUl8ter).

So, a thumbs-up to the electronic chorus of well-wishes; the lineup of virtual hugs. Because all together, they can live forever, strung together in my phone. A “‘Tis the season!” “I love you;” “I’m glad we’re still alive;” I miss you;” “I thought of you because I burnt my nuts in the oven,” narrative – the short version.

The Zaftig Female Form: It’s History

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

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Drawing by Julie Seyler.

Drawing by Julie Seyler.

BY JULIE SEYLER

This has the potential to be a politically incorrect blog. But here goes: The New York Times reported that mannequins in Venezuela are produced according to the populace’s ideal perception of women. This means oversized bosoms, small waists and palpable hips and buttocks. In fact, in Venezuela, augmentation surgery is openly discussed and accepted, at least by the persons interviewed for the article:

Cosmetic procedures are so fashionable here that a woman with implants is often casually referred to as “an operated woman.” Women freely talk about their surgeries, and mannequin makers jokingly refer to the creations as being “operated” as well.

The article indicated some feminist outcry to the notion that perfect beauty resides in the form of an hourglass. But nothing like what would erupt in the United States should the Playboy model once again emerge as an emblem of the ideal body. I can neither pass judgment nor analyze a culture far removed from mine. But it did start me thinking about depictions of the female form.

When I wander around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am always entranced by the sculptures depicting women that have been excavated from the ancient burial sites of Greece, Mycenae and Cyprus. Some of these figurines date as far back as 4500 B.C. They are beautiful. Modern art thousands of years ago. I wander from gallery to gallery picking out old favorites, and discovering new ones. In the end, it is obvious – there is nothing new about hips and bosoms.

Five terracotta statues from Cyprus 1450-1200 BC

Five terracotta statues from Cyprus 1450-1200 B.C.

Actually, the collective unconscious that has sculpted, shall we say mannequins, goes much further back than a mere 5,513 years. Thirty-five thousand years ago, sculptures carved from mammoths’ tusks and limestone, that can only be described as zaftig were being created throughout Europe. They are known as Venus figures. So, when you think about it, the earliest artists ever, those that lived before history had a starting date, depicted their ideal women as voluptuous:

Marble female figure 4500-4000 B.C.

Marble female figure 4500-4000 B.C.

I guess the Venezuelan mannequins can be viewed as simply a bridge to prehistory.

My 14-Year-Old Self Came in the Mail. Should I Open?

25 Monday Nov 2013

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AshtabulaPostMark-001

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

A large brown envelope arrived recently in snail mail from Ashtabula, Ohio. It contained copies of letters I wrote to a young woman named Mary when we were 14. We met in the northeastern Ohio township, and decided to keep in touch when my summer vacation ended.

I found her on Facebook, and we got in touch after four decades. When she realized I’d become a writer, she mentioned my letters in a box in her attic. Would I like copies? What could I have possible said in those letters to a relative stranger 300 miles away? And why would she save them into this millennium?

“They’re about what you’d expect a 14 year old to write about,” she said.

Would I like to meet myself at 14? Not that I could go back and talk some sense into my head, but what I think about those times now and what I was actually saying at the time, well, they’re mountains apart.

I’m sure I was a bad writer. I wrote those letters before I decided to become a writer. Mary does get credit for encouraging me to write about anything and everything. At 5 cents to mail, I guess I wrote a dozen letters.

What were my interests in 1968? I was too young to worry about the draft. I’d just learned to ice skate and dabbled in hockey. I had a fish tank of dubious quality. My fish, when they weren’t eating each other, got white spots and died. Or their tails rotted off. Is that what I wrote about? Was that how I thought I’d impress this future drum majorette?
The Star Beacon, year unknown. typos and all.

Mary was friends with Natalie, who lived next door to my best friend, Pete. I only ever met and talked with Mary when she was visiting in Natalie’s yard. A home-made swing hung from a long thick rope tied off at the top of a thick branch of a strong old tree. Sometimes, when no one was around I’d swing on that tree. Other times, the girls might let me push them a time or two.

I take comfort that I was not writing poetry then. It would have been awful, I’m sure. I hate to look at my handwriting in those old letters. My mom called my penmanship chicken scratch. Why couldn’t I write neat and nice like my older sister who put up with me visiting her in Ashtabula my teen summers?

“But, Ma, she writes like a girl!”

It was my sister who got married, and left Jersey for Ashtabula. Her letters home were something we all looked forward to reading. Mother answered those letters. I never wrote to my sister. Why would I? She was old and married! But I think I got the bug from her to write to someone – Mary. And later, others. As these ancient missives resurface I wonder if letter writing as a lost art form should stay lost.

So, what do I do with this envelope of long-lost and forgotten musings? Shall I open it and greet my teenage self? Discover how I chronicled my wonder years?

Or shall I leave it sealed and keep safe whatever memories of those times that still swirl and swell in my grey matter? Sealed forever or open, here’s to Mary, Rhonda and others, too. I’ll always remember you in ink stains and sparkling synapses.

Time Flies Quickly (and Backwards) on the Internet

04 Monday Nov 2013

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BY JULIE SEYLER

2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
So I am filling out relevant personal data online to obtain the cheapest airline ticket possible, and my date of birth is required. I click “1” for the date and scroll down to October for the month. Then I must enter the year. Up pops 1988, and I start scrolling down and down, past
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
1979
1978
1977
1976
1975
1974
1973
1972
1971
1970
and I am still not there! I ealize that people born in 1973, the year I graduated high school, are so young.  They are only 40. Even though it seems like yesterday, it really was a while ago. Anyway, I keep scrolling.
1969
1968
1967
1966
1965
1964
1963
1962
1961
1960
1959
1958
1957
1956
And bingo! I finally hit 1955.

Gosh. It is so far from the top, and with each passing year so much closer to the bottom. Today, online, the oldest year you can be born is 1893. In 47 more years it will be 1955. What a way to visualize time marching forward and backward.

Every Dog Should Have a Good Day Because Dogs Are People

01 Friday Nov 2013

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Dog reading

Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I’ve been reminded lately that “Dogs are People,Too.” Not only by Gregory Berns’ piece in The Times about his research on “how dogs’ brains work and, even more important, what they think of us humans,” but by my 10-year-old Border Collie mix, Tela, who not only doesn’t think much of me lately, but whose brain has been working much like that of a terrible-two-year-old child.

For six weeks now, she’s been barking, and barking some more, whenever I leave.

Our recent move from a house to an apartment has been an adjustment for her. But I know her. It’s not that she misses me. I think she misses her inveterate, mom’s-leaving routine:

A head-tilt. Then a walk to, and a plop under, her favorite hallway bench. Once the all-glass back door closed, she would sit at it – our gatekeeper. She had a full view of her favorite pee spot, her favorite step, her sun spot on the driveway, and all the comings and goings at her house.

So I thought I had figured out how to help her adjust to the move. I brought her there for a month, almost every day, before we moved in. My new hallway is a carpet of knarled doggie toys. I put her favorite bench in full view of the apartment door. Not enough. She can’t see out. She’s stressed. And she’s giving me a (dog) run for my money.

After a quick chat with the resident dog whisperer, and a mini-onslaught of notes slipped under my door from my neighbors – and then my neighbors on the floors below and above – I took, and put into action, the reams of advice:

  • A low-dose static-pulse, no-bark collar (made her bark more).
  • A citronella-spray, no-bark collar (apparently she likes citronella – it made her bark more).
  • Sneak out.
  • Give her a toy filled with peanut butter every time you leave.
  • Give her real bacon from the pan smothered in peanut butter, stuffed in her favorite toy, and stashed under her favorite bench before you leave (regurgitated on my living room rug).
  • And “just tell her not to bark.”

Almost six weeks in, and hundreds of dollars later, she was still barking.

So, since dogs are people, Tela and I now do what many people do when they are stressed – we get down on a mat and pose in twists, turns, bends, inversions and downward dogs. We do yoga together.

I get up extra early. I roll out my mat in the living room, and do an hour of Yoga Burn with Tela. She loves to lay on the pink rubber mat. She rubs her nose all over it. Then she does her butt-in-the-air stretch, and stays by my side until I’m done. In her new sangfroid state, she then reposes herself at her new favorite spot on the couch by the window. She stays there as I, in my new, daily state of composedness, make my way out the door.

Dog before she discovered yoga:

Tela face

Dog in post-yoga, sun-soaked Zen:

tela-couch

So as of three days ago, we went three days with no barking. (I’m pretending there was no relapse last night, because I’m calm.) My dog seems to be getting it down.

My New Kitchen is “Cookin'”

11 Friday Oct 2013

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kitchen

No room for a broom, but aura-aplenty.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I’ve lived long enough to accept that change is assured. Not the kind of change that comes about from restlessness – as it does when we are younger, when we choose change with abandon and ardor – but midlife change that can come with less renewal, and more fallout. Losing the sustaining comfort of familiar to the uneasiness of foreign can now hit with a punch-in-the-gut force that can sideline the most resilient among us. It could be the death of someone you love. Or divorce. Independence and self-reliance can be snuffed out because of illness, or reduced physical capacity. Unwelcome adjustments may have to be made because careers are dwindling and the financial safety net has been pocked.

Midlife is a letting-go part of life. There’s much saying goodbye to familiar.

A month ago yesterday, I moved from my beloved family house to my own apartment. A lot of my familiar has been plucked and tossed since that move. For the first time in 30 years, I’m living in space that is less mine. (I have to share stairways, elevators, walls, floors, a laundry room, the front door … toilet flushes.) In the beginning, time would sometimes stand so still at random moments – I could be driving, walking my dog, sleeping – that I would be jolted into an uneasy awareness at the reality of all that was, and all that is no longer – the familiar was conspicuously absent.

But I am also a lover of change. I will throw myself into the deep end, and find my way up – smiling. So, while my recent move (and accompanying fallout) has been unnerving at times, I’ve been adjusting spectacularly to the new everything …

… except the kitchen. Yes – you can mess with my familiar. Take my marriage! Bye! to my beautiful (big sniff) babies. Who needs a back yard? I no longer need shovels. And privacy is for the dead.

But don’t take my big old kitchen. My old kitchen owned my aura. It was my nimbus – hanging over me with “home.” It’s where my children would rush to after school. It’s where their scraped knees were bandaged, and stomaches nourished. They would do their homework in the kitchen, and recently, as young men, would gather with their friends over a beer. There was a corner the size of a closet for the shoes of a family of four. It’s where the party began, and usually stayed. It could be set aglow with a dozen candelabras on the counters. Holidays, birthdays, summer nights, winter storms – all kitchen-bound.

My new kitchen is the size of my old broom closet. And I’m OK with stacking and piling. I don’t care that my fancy, etched glasses are in the second bedroom armoire. Love my wine rack in the hallway! And so what that my cool, crystal, just-for-party-plates are in my car?

It seems, though, that it’s the little things that have been looming big in loss. I can’t blast music and do my joyful cooking-twirl with my wine in hand without crashing into a wall. There’s room for one stool, and it only fits in the corner, with room for only one elbow on the counter. I can’t gather more than three (I have squooshed five) people in it at once. (We can’t sit down.) I’m the bandaged one these days, because if I leave the cabinets open, I’m pierced in either the head or ankle. To cook and eat and drink requires a lot of turns sideways.

But a month in, I’m beginning to feel huge of heart in my small kitchen with a (newly) big aura. Yes, I can only hang there in bursts of time, instead of hours. And yes, it’s the old oven that burns these days, not candelabras. I’ve left the small square space right outside its doorway furniture-free for my wine-infused cooking-twirls (OK, more like twists). Adjustments, all. But little gems, each, that remind me that letting go means more space for letting in. That living large is about hugging change like your bursting-with-zeal-20-year-old self. My new kitchen may be narrow of space, counter-challenged, and twirl-free. But it’s found its aura. And it’s become familiar.

Smile! Probing Pictures Are Being Taken from Space

07 Monday Oct 2013

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Bob's Universe.

Bob’s universe. By Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Sitting at breakfast recently reading a magazine, I came across a photo taken by a NASA spacecraft called the Cassini probe, which since 2004 has been orbiting Saturn, exploring the planet and its moons. The entire upper portion of the photo is dominated by the dark arc of one portion of Saturn, and to the right of that, a greenish-gray swath of the planet’s rings. The tightly concentric black and green-gray lines comprising the rings resemble the grooves on an old vinyl record, except that the rings appear to be glowing gently against the black background of space. That dark expanse dominates the center portion of the photo, and at the bottom there’s a ghostly horizonal white stripe that’s either light from an unseen source to the left, or a distant slice of the Milky Way. The image is majestic, peaceful, and kind of eerie.

The sobering thing is that, as explained in the accompanying article, it’s actually a photo of earth from approximately 900 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away. I thought, at first, that the object just to the right of center was a fragment of the english muffin I’d been eating. Indeed, a toasty crumb had fallen on the magazine, so I brushed it off to reveal a minuscule white speck – 1/100th the size of my bread crumb. It looked like a nick in the ink, or a dust mote, but I couldn’t wipe it away. According to the article, that irregular speck is the earth and the infinitesmal bulge on its side is the moon, both as seen from Saturn’s orbit.

Two thoughts came to mind: We are nothing. And we are not alone. If an infininte number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite amount of time could eventually write the entire works of Shakspeare, then there must be untold numbers of other planets with Earth-like life forms spread throughout the inconceivable vastness of the universe. I decided to have another fried egg. What the hell.

But the earth photo was nothing compared to the news a few days later, when NASA made the ultimate “Elvis has left the building” announcement: after 36 years of hurtling through the void at 38,000 miles per hour, the Voyager space probe has exited the solar system and entered interstellar space. It’s now nearly 12 billion miles away, and still sends back minute radio signals using a transmitter with about the same amount of power as a refrigerator light bulb. It takes nearly 17 1/2 hours for the signal to reach Earth, and when it arrives, the wattage striking the antenna is only about 1 part in 10 quadrillion. By comparison, it takes 20 billion times more power than that to operate an electronic digital watch.

Aside from studying the planets and the far reaches of our solar system, Voyager also carries a message for any intelligent life that may find it someday: the Golden Record. This 12-inch diameter, gold-plated, copper audiovisual disk includes 115 images and sounds representative of life on Earth as well as musical selections and spoken greetings in 55 languages. Of course, to play the record, you’d first have to build a record/video disk player, speakers, and display screen. I guess they figured that any life form intelligent enough to snatch this probe from its race through space would be able to figure that out. And the NASA engineers were thoughful enough to include a cartridge and needle you could use to play the record once you’d built the machine to play it on – a good idea, since it’s hard even now, right here on Earth, to get needles and cartridges to play old vinyl LPs.

I thought back to the Cassini photo: if the entire planet is a speck from 900 million miles, aren’t we surely invisible from 12 billion and counting? Compared to the universe, our solar system is smaller than an electron oscillating in one molecule of a hair follicle on the ass of a flea. And if we’re invisible and barely detectable, who’s ever going to find us, even if other intelligent beings are out there? And if they really are out there, why haven’t they sent us their Golden LPs, begging for retrieval and playback?

Keep your eyes open, kids. You never know. And let’s just hope that if the aliens send an 8-track tape with information about their planet, they include the whole device because working 8-track players are even scarcer than record needles.