Amazon first earned my irrational loyalty several years ago when they sent me Christmas gifts just for being a customer. One year it was an insulated travel mug; another year it was a mouse pad bearing a witty Groucho Marx quote.
I count on Amazon for my holiday shopping every year. The selection is incredible, the prices are great, and I save a huge amount of time and irritation by avoiding malls and big-box stores. Also, it seems much easier on the environment for the UPS truck to deliver all this stuff to my porch than for me to burn up a bunch of fuel driving around to various stores.
I'm not insensitive to the plight of local retailers. I make sure to patronize certain local stores at the holidays: the wine store, the deli, the hobby shop... mainly places in strip malls that I can get in and out of quickly. I used to patronize the little independent bookseller, too, when we had one.
I also like to reward local places that give me good service all year long. For example, I let the kids do some shopping for relatives at our local CVS because the pharmacy employees and the cashiers there are always pleasant and helpful.
So local stores have a place... but as for the rest, it sure seems to me like Amazon is the wave of the future.
I would like to see less waste in packaging (Amazon is taking the lead with this! Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/9rfqf4). And I want there to be good conditions and wages for the workers who make all this stuff; I'd pay more for that.
I also wish our culture put less emphasis on consumption of frivolous goods and focused more on stuff that will actually help humanity. But that's a tall order. For the near future, if grocery chains such as Kroger would move to a home-delivery model, then my retail contentment would be complete.
"Mommy, do you want to get this Gillette razor? Your legs are sometimes spiky--beew! beew! beew!--like a cactus."
Following is a link to a screen capture.
1. Click to view. What's the first thing you perceived?
2. Hit your Back button to come back here, then add a comment to tell me what you saw.
After seeing some Lincoln-o-bilia at the Henry Ford Museum recently, I checked out a book on Lincoln and did some surfing. I have never given a lot of thought to Lincoln beyond knowing the basic stories we all learn, so I wasn't aware of how many photographs and artifacts there are to see. Here's a sampling.
Kunhardt, Looking For Lincoln (A.A. Knopf, 2008)
This is a large, heavy fifty-dollar book most people will want to borrow from the library, not buy. It tells the story of Lincoln's assassination and the subsequent formation of his legend using photographs and accounts by eyewitnesses.
I wonder whether Lincoln's assassination is the first national-scale news event to be so heavily photographed.
Artifacts in Museums
The contents of Lincoln's pockets the day he was shot are at the Library of Congress.
The chair he was sitting in when he was shot is at the Henry Ford Museum, which I visited again recently. At left is my photo of the chair.
There are many more artifacts. Here's a great Lincoln site to peruse.
Conclusion
I don't really feel as if I know Lincoln the dude any better than I did before; it's just amazing to know that these things exist.
For some reason I find 19th-century U.S. historical figures harder to relate to than the founding fathers. Perhaps it's because Franklin, Jefferson, et al. are known only through writings and somewhat idealized paintings, so we can easily fill in the blanks with our imaginations. When you see an actual photograph of Lincoln (or Frederick Douglass, or Walt Whitman), you are confronted with direct evidence of the existence of a human being you'll never be able to touch or speak with. And since it's a photo, it's not idealized; there the person is, literally warts and all. By today's standards of grooming, health and hygiene, they're a funny-looking bunch.
Trying to know the people--that's what I like about history.
The pizza at Chuck E. Cheese's is cartoonishly perfect.
In the words of Henry, soon to be 8 years old:
When the weather is really punishing, the sun is the primary jive sucker.
The kids and I were planning an election night feast. One of the kids suggested making gingerbread men "because the gingerbread is dark like Obama."
What a wonderful, wonderful idea . . . and a night to remember.
Today I was at one of those fly-by-night Halloween stores. I saw these two signs marking adjacent aisles. I found them unexpectedly, inexplicably poignant.
--
PIMP /
Rapper
GANGSTER /
Flapper
Today I heard a grocery bagger tell his friend (the customer in line behind me) that "if Obama is elected, we won't receive paychecks anymore--but we WILL all have big-screen TVs and Cadillacs."
Wow. From now on, anytime I hear someone call Obama "elitist," I'll send them to talk to that bagger. They can discuss Obama until their heads explode.
