What Are People Actually Thinking?

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

March 2011

I've always wondered what people are actually thinking. It boggles the mind when you see what they do, what they say. Are they thinking? I took a course in psychology, way back when, to try to understand it. What I learned was when the environment of lab rats was put into turmoil, the rats went crazy. Is that our world today? Are people simply reacting to our nutty environment, the terror, the aggressiveness, the pace, the economy? Which came first, behavior or thinking?

You know what you are thinking. In the interest of trying to figure out what you or others are thinking, I thought I'd tell you what I am thinking.

I don't think you can surmise what goes on in a person's mind, one can't read their actual thoughts by simply noting their behavior. You can't overhear what they are thinking, as though they are doing a Shakespearean soliloquy.

I have to admit that in recent years I have started to think aloud, talk to myself. I am often alone for great periods, and suddenly realize that I haven't said anything for hours. My cell phone is just sitting there. Though I am married and have friends and family, I don't think aloud where others can hear me. So up to now no one knows what I am thinking, unless I tell them. When I write they may have some idea but writing is different.

A great many of my thoughts, I am sure, are not unique. I am a member of society and the human race, which is comforting, though I like to think I am me and no one else is me. My thoughts, as yours are too, were different when we were young, growing up, getting an education and at different stages of life.

So what are some of the things I have been thinking lately?

I have done a lot of reading in my time of philosophy and psychology and the classics. They are a part of me, but I don't think of them actively that much now, with some exceptions.

When I look in the mirror in the morning I sometimes talk to my image. Who are you I wonder? What do people think about you? They see my profile and the back of my head, which has to give them a different view of me physically, in addition to the frontal view that is familiar to me.

When someone calls out my name I am somewhat surprised, though of course I shouldn't be. I use their names, why shouldn't they use mine? My parents named me and for the rest of my life I have come to realize that is me. If I had changed my name, which I had thought of doing, would that also be who I am?

And what does it mean to be a senior, to have lived a portion of what others call history? I was "it" a while ago in a game of "Trivial Pursuits." I had to select a category. I was not up on sports or contemporary music, or so many other things. I knew something about history, so I chose it. Every question was about something that had happened in my lifetime. History!

To have lived through the Great Depression, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, all those presidents. Other people's history.

Have you ever thought about all the numbers in your life? Social Security, your land telephone number, cell phone number, your address, the phone numbers and addresses of the people you know, if you work, all those numbers, how much money you have, how much you have lost, your library card, your credit cards, pin numbers, checking account, passwords, license plate, driving permit, passport number, date of birth, wife's or partner's numbers, your combination lock, your safe deposit box, the temperature, the distance of the moon and the planets, how many days in November, your weight. You get the picture. Be grateful you are not on Roman numerals. How do you remember all those numbers?

I think a lot about my wife, of course, and my friends and family, and I'm sure they think about me, though one can't know exactly what they are thinking. Fiction describes people, some times going into their heads, added to the observations of behavior. Can that be utilized to understanding the way people actually think?

Psychologists, philosophers, do they know? The closest I can come to guessing what you are thinking has to do with the news, politics, family life, relationships, sports, the movies, television, the economy, healthcare, things to buy. We think about what we see and hear on the media, to paraphrase Will Rogers, who ironically said he only knows what he reads in the newspapers.

Kids, teenagers, adults, tomorrow's seniors, heads full of thoughts, some wise, some banal. Sex, children, survival, jobs, money, pleasure, health, joy, fear -- all those thoughts, the good and the bad. We may not know them, but as the Bard reminds us, "Thinking makes it so."

One of the little things I think about is what I should have for a drink before dinner. Or whether I should have a drink. I have heard that having a drink, as long as it is not in excess, say two or three, isn't harmful. In fact, a glass or two of wine with dinner is actually beneficial. And enjoyable. Eating, in excess, isn't good for you. Nor is sex these days.

What else do I think?

There is, of course, the world, our country, the suffering and joys, what it all means, if that were possible.

Sometimes I am not thinking at all, just reacting, living the day. But when I am not day dreaming, there are more things I think about.

Bob Herbert, The New York Times columnist, makes me think about the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class losing that position in society that they have had since World War II. Are we losing our democracy, while Egypt and perhaps parts of the Middle East, may be gaining theirs?

Why do some people order Coke when they go out to dinner? Why do they order a hamburger at a good restaurant? Why do they dress down instead of up? Why do they shout and laugh so much in restaurants? Why is the music, if that's what it's called, so loud in restaurants? The French don't allow it. So much better for your enjoyment of a good meal.

Why do some people drive so fast, even in the rain? And so aggressively, without common courtesy?

Am I being too critical? I wonder about that sometimes. But not enough.

What do I like about some people? That they're nice, funny, interesting, look good whether they are good looking or not. Why don't I like Best Sellers, popular movies? Am I an elitist? What's so bad about being an elitist? Wasn't that once upon a time a distinction like a good education?

I think about my skin a lot. It's so vulnerable. Is that the word for sensitive? It cracks and sheds, gets so dry. It has lost its integrity, some one once told me.

I used to think about what people thought of me. No longer, though I want to think I still care, in a way. What are some of the other things I think about?

Security, relationships, what I should have said that time, the moon, the stars, the universe, evolution, faith, books I'm reading and have read, my education, money, death, my travels, my health, my garden, my 71 Olds Cutlass Supreme convertible, what's going on, where it's going, so many questions.

Enough about me. What are you thinking, right now?

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You're Only Dead Once

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright Elliott Joseph

February 2011

To life!

Hey, wait a minute. This blog is supposed to be entertaining. What am I doing writing about death? Well maybe what has an absolute end can help provide meaning to what comes before.

Ernst Becker opens his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "The Denial of Death," with a quote from Samuel Johnson, "The prospect of death wonderfully concentrates the mind." As the realization came to me of its eventuality, whenever that may occur, I began to prepare information for those who will have the responsibility of taking care of matters after I am gone.

What started this for me? Besides my own natural thoughts, I was faced with all those tragedies and disasters in the news, floods, tornados, storms, shootings, war, disease, the ever presence of obituaries.

But what sealed it for me was deleting the names in my address book of those friends and family members who have passed away. What a terribly sad and painful thing to do! Everyone dies, but how to accept it? If I could retain the names of the dead, perhaps their ghosts would comfort me.

There is so much being written about death these days. The media, the literature, the films, the theater. It's hard to escape it.

Live forever? Jonathan Swift cautions us about that, as you may recall from that part of Gulliver's Travels about the Struldbrugs.

"Happy notion where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal...their minds free and disengaged from the continual apprehension of death." What advantages I would acquire if I lived forever, I thought.

"The question," Swift writes, "was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would have a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it.

"Loss of teeth and hair, no distinctions of taste, eating and drinking without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue. In talking they forget the common appalation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations."

And so Emerson writes, "As the bird trims how to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, obey the voice of eve obeyed at prime; 'Lowly faithful, banishing fear, right onward drive unharmed; port, well worth the cruise, is near, and every wave is charmed.'"

And John Donne. "Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so."

For some, I guess, like Donne, "One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, death, thou shall die."

Every creature, from the beasts of the jungle to the tiniest insect, does everything it can to avoid death, and yet there are men and women and boys and girls who come to welcome it, though in truth, others embrace it tranquilly, if not eagerly.

Death?

To life!

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You're Only Dead Once

Ten Thousand Words?

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2011 Elliott Joseph

January 2011

On Christmas Day The New York Times published The Year in Pictures 2010. To say they were remarkable, eloquent and breathtaking would not be an exaggeration. On the same day the San Francisco Chronicle published an article reporting that Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the last lab in the world processing Kodachrome color film, will discontinue its service at the end of the year.

Also reported was "The Last Kodachrome Photograph Show." The photographer Pat Willard, who will have four Kodachrome photographs in the show, refuses to use Ektachrome film and will revert to black and white.

My wife Roz Joseph, also a professional photographer, has refused to go digital and has given up taking pictures, leaving some thousands of color slides and prints in her collection.

With page after page of color photographs in the paper, especially in the Sunday Magazine, it is shocking that the Times has announced it is dramatically reducing (believe it?) the publishing of photographs starting the first of 2011, in an effort to bring back some of the ten thousand words that even one picture represents.

Words will continue to appear in the paper for those intrepid readers who wish to go beyond the captivating images brought to bear by a host of talented shutterbugs.

So what's going on? It is the development of the digital camera that may be behind the return of the printed word. Rapid technological advance of the camera from the days of the old Graphlex encumbered by its outlandish flash, has transformed photography to today's convenient digital devices which not only do away with film, but which, with alarming alacrity, backed by the extraordinary manipulations afforded by Photo Shop, produce frightfully gorgeous results, such as raising a model's awkward eyebrow and putting a sports car on the top of Mount Everest.

I am a victim as well as a beneficiary of this ease of producing good color renditions heretofore requiring the most careful attention to format and subject, and without the need of utilizing painstaking studio work aided by brilliantly creative lighting.

In a recent three week trip to Portugal, one of the world's most photogenic countries, I shot, without any particularly professional ability, over 700 not bad photographs with a pocket sized digital camera I bought for less than two hundred and fifty dollars. Gone were the heavy, expensive Nikons and their array of lenses with there countless boxes of transparency film, to shoot dozens of guesswork slides that I could show to no one without a projector and a dinosaur of a screen, while they dozed off in boredom. Furthermore, each of those friends and relatives, with their digital cameras could now produce rather excellent pictures, making my own unnecessary.

I must say I have taken some pretty good pictures myself in the past, have gotten some awards, and have been the subject of photographs by some excellent pros, such as the one shown here by the renowned travel photographer Carl Purcell, who had led the safari trip to Kenya that my wife and I took twenty-five years ago. Because of his talented eye he was able to make a snapshot look thought out, and it proved good enough to be published in newspapers across the United States and abroad, demonstrating that you don't need a digital camera to do a great job.

In my early career in advertising I learned to respect the agency's art directors and photographers whose now ancient equipment could produce outstanding work. Who read my words of copy that I labored over?

So it's actually the quality of the photography these days that is behind The New York Times possible thoughts about questioning the proverbial statement that a picture is worth ten thousand words. And the word may be spreading. Amazon is back to selling books. With Kindle, your average consumer is reading more, and turning from the thrall of the image.

Sports, travel, advertising, arts and leisure, Sunday styles, even The Week in Review, have been dependent on the photograph to grab the attention that only a glaring headline used to produce.

If the Times ever does cut back its photography, will you miss the ease of all those amazing pictures to tell you their story? Will it try to make you want to know more with the word?

"Taking photographs," writes Susan Sontag in On Photography, "has set up a chronic voyeuristic reaction to the world which levels the meaning of all events."

Will I lose my former love of the photograph? Is it too seductive, too easy to relate to? Has it become too time consuming to think? Too difficult to ignore? Will I miss the words?

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Alameda Sand Sculpture

By Elliott Joseph

Photography By Roz Joseph

Copyright 2010 Elliott Joseph

December 2010

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read."

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that marked them and the heart that fed,

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who can explain the compelling anti-Ozymandias passion to create beautiful sculptures and castles of sand, only to see them washed away within hours by a relentlessly approaching tide? This curious and highly vulnerable art form can be seen on countless bathing beaches around the world each summer, yet nowhere is it more poignantly and expertly practiced than at the Robert Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda, California where each June several hundred serious men, women and children compete in the Annual Sand Sculpture and Castle Contest.

They come well prepared to this broad expanse, with its handsome view of the San Francisco skyline. They bring home-made tools, shovels, containers for carrying and spraying water, a sketch of their planned sculpture, warm clothes for protection against the wind, and enough food and drink to sustain them during the feverish work session to meet the deadline and beat the water before it erases their painstakingly constructed achievements from the memory of mankind.

The sculpture must be made of sand, with trimming of wood, rocks and shells found that day on the beach. That's the only rule before they go to work, singly or in groups, on the small plot of beach assigned to them at the low tide morning registration hour. By mid-day their sculpture will have to be completed so that the judging, and the all-important picture-taking, can take place before the inevitable.

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Fading Fast

Painted Wall Signs Are Disappearing

But Is Restoration The Answer?

By Elliott Joseph

Photographs By Roz Joseph

Reprinted From Online Preservation

Copyright Elliott Joseph

November 2010

In the heart of Chinatown in Oakland, California, there is an old advertising sign that looks just like new. In fact, it is. The "MJB Coffee Why?"sign, prominently displayed on the side of a century-old building was first painted in 1906, but was redone 15 years ago.

The owners of the building were able to get a grant from the MJB Coffee Company, through the Oakland Museum, to repaint the sign in its original colors. The sign was one of dozens that had been painted on walls throughout California for the company, which wanted to pique people's curiosity about their java.

Across the bay in San Francisco, on a building that housed the Victoria Theater, another old advertising wall sign was revitalized 25 years ago. The 1920 "Albers Flapjack Flour" sign had deteriorated so much that painters had to find photographs of the original wall from the Carnation Company, which owned Albers. Although the black-and-white photographs showed the miner's facial expression and other details on the ad, painters had to guess the mural's colors.

These renewed signs are among the exceptions, however. Thousands of others in cities, towns, and rural areas across America are not as fortunate. They are doomed, either by destruction of the buildings that are their canvasses, a covering coat of paint, or weather and time.

For instance, San Francisco's "Get Kist for a Nickel" sign, whose provocative message promoted the soft drink for more than 40 years, is gone. In the otherwise beautifully preserved town of Nevada City, California, the landmark "Rose Fashion Shoppe" wall sign can barely be read. Exposed to the elements for almost a century, it is simply fading away.

Created for commercial purposes on brick, concrete and other canvasses, old painted wall signs may have lost their power of persuasion, but they have taken on a value of their own as American artifacts.

One of the companies that painted walls was the California firm of Foster and Kleiser. Before it was purchased by another company in 1953, when the service was discontinued, the company had painted walls in hundreds of cities in the Western states. The service was called the "Special Paint" department, says Joseph Blackstock, director of research at the Patrick Media Group, Inc., the company's current owners.

"The term 'Special Paint' was probably more accurate in the years following World War II," Blackstock says, "because we painted on other surfaces as well as on regular walls. We might paint designs on water towers or reservoirs or indeed do murals in commercial establishments."

Almost all outdoor advertising companies offered a wall-painting service in the early years. The paint was usually brightly colored, and signs were painted once a year, sometimes twice or more. Affectionately known as "wall dogs," the painters had to work with many kinds of surfaces.

"Some of the surfaces were so bad," Blackstock says, "they would wear out good brushes in a day or two. Another factor was the weather. In Seattle and Portland, much of the painting had to be done in the rain. In Tucson and Phoenix, it was often in temperatures of over 100 degrees."

The cost of painted advertisements was surprisingly low. In 1929, they ranged from $15 to $50 per month for a three year contract in heavily trafficked areas, with exceptionally busy locations going for $100 per month. Ten years later, the company sold advertisements for as little as $9 per month and as much as $250. More than a few new products got their start on wall ads: Coca-Cola, Signal Oil, and Canada Dry were prime examples.

In addition to using walls in cities, enterprising tobacco companies sent their representatives to rural areas to convince farmers to allow the sides of their barns to become advertisements. One of the most successful companies to do this was Mail Pouch Tobacco: "Treat Yourself to the Best" started to appear on barns everywhere.

"In the early days, the farmer was offered his choice of being paid subscriptions, says Mary Ruth Whorton of the Helme Tobacco Company, which now owns the Mail Pouch brand. Whorton tells the story of a British celebrity arriving in New York who was asked what he thought America was most famous for. Without a moment's hesitation, he replied, "Good looking women and Mail Pouch Tobacco signs."

At first, local sign painters were given the rural jobs. Later, by the 1930s, the firm of William and Ed Burner were handling all the contracts -- as many as 17,000 barns, walls and billboards. The 1965 Highway Beautification Act forced Mail Pouch to paint over many of its ads, since signs within 660 feet of interstate and federally aided highways are now prohibited. In former days, it took about three years to cover all the territories.

Currently, Helme employs one part-time person to paint signs in Ohio, West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania and Western Maryland. They are repainted every five to six years, and new locations are rarely added.

Painting walls is a tradition as old as Pompeii. In old wall signs a time is conveyed that can never return, when milk was delivered at the door, when flappers danced the Charleston and a penny bought a salted pretzel or a jaw-challenging gumball. Is restoring them an option? Some say that those who attempt to restore these ads change them in the process. They look too new, too crisp, too fresh, and too out of place, as if we expected to take their original message seriously. There is something to be said for keeping those that remain in a state of arrested decay.

"I loved those old wall signs," Blackstock says, "and was greatly disappointed when our company discontinued them."

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Six Days in The City

By Elliott Joseph

Reprinted from California Living

San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

Copyright 2010 Elliott Joseph

From a diary found under a bench in Washington Square

MONDAY

11:10 a.m.

Up after nine and a half hours. Feeling good. Better wash T-shirt. Hair coming along.

Noon

Breakfast at Jim and Dora's. Saw Kim and Charles. Fog burning off.

1:00 p.m.

Almost succeeded in controlling left nostril after twenty-five minutes of concentration in Washington Square.

2:00 p.m.

Observed some suits. Wasted lives.

3:00 p.m.

Read "Walden." Really dig Thoreau. Wind coming up.

5:00 p.m.

Hunza's for a shake.

7:00 p.m.

Gold Spike for dinner. No wine.

9:00 p.m.

Cold tonight. Double espresso at Trieste. Rapped about war and photography.

Midnight.

Felt stiff neck coming on. Practiced concentrating on the left nostril again. To bed at two.

TUESDAY

11:25 a.m.

Up after nine and a half. Neck OK.

Noon

Bumped into Maggie at Jim and Dora's. Said she's going to buy some belts and set up a blanket at Embarcadero Plaza. Asked me if I want to go into partnersip. Baba says, "All life is an effort to attain freedom from self-created entanglement."

1:00 p.m.

Held breath for three minutes in Washington Square.

2:00 p.m.

Hitched to Golden Gate Park. Got a ride all the way in a new Ford pick-up. Golden Gate Park was designed by one man. Why does man foul the nest?

5:00 p.m.

Took three hitches to get to North Beach. Bumped into Red Ed. Said he was going to Oregon. "I love a broad margin to my life." Sky bluer than blue. Bought some groceries.

7:00 p.m.

Beef stew at the U.S. Saw this groovy chick. Great teeth. Libra. Would you believe, a lawyer!

9:00 p.m.

Walked. Glad I didn't sell my black turtle neck sweater.

Midnight

Smoked. Resolved never to shave the beard for anyone. Thought I was getting a headache, but it passed.

WEDNESDAY

Noon

Ten hours. At this rate, I'll live to be a hundred.

12:30 p.m.

Breakfast at Jim and Dora's. Should take coffee black.

1:15 p.m.

Tried the right nostril at Washington Square Got a dog's mess on my left leg. Surprised I didn't get mad.

2:30 p.m.

Walked to Bank of America building. All bombing is insane. Peace has to start with each of us. Sorry I sold my camera.

4:30 p.m.

Watched the commuters running. To eat their meals? Play tennis? Make love?

6:00 p.m.

Napped.

7:00 p.m.

Liver and onions at Little Joe's. The way he sweats!

9:00 p.m.

Peeked into three pornos. Do our bodies think?

10:00 p.m

Picked up this girl. Sally. Works for an advertising agency as a secretary. Has an M.A. in English, but didn't tell them so she could get the job. Inglorious man.

Midnight.

Three times.

THURSDAY

9:30 a.m.

Phil, Mark and a guy named Bob crashed pad. Hitching all night. Mark going back to get his degree. Went back to sleep.

Noon

Called Sally. Crab meat salad at Mama's. Sally paid. Wondered whatever happened to Ruth Moore.

1:30 p.m.

Left nostril exercise at Washington Square.

2:00 p.m.

Wondered what I'll be like at thirty. Not all that far to go. Felt the warm sun under my skin. Bob made me laugh this morning. Said he'd come to San Francisco to make it.

3:30 p.m.

Walked to Cala Foods. No opening yet. Checker cum laude. The dears don't know what they're missing.

6:00 p.m.

Letter from mom. Herb got a raise. Her hints used to be more subtle.

7:00 p.m.

Everybody to the U.S. Had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Maggie there. Said she's got the belts. Told her I'm not cut out for business. Now how would I know that?

9:30 p.m.

Browsed through Tower Records. Shot pool at the Sport.

Midnight.

Alone again.

FRIDAY

11:00 a.m.

Registered at Opportunity Personnel. Why is filling out an application so degrading? Should be called a supplication.

1:00 p.m.

Changed back into jeans.

2:00 p.m.

Dim Sum at Hang Ah. Wondered who is going to rent all that office space going up.

3:00 p.m.

Cable cars filling up. Must be the weekend again.

4:00 p.m.

Fell asleep on a bench at Washington Square. Hit by a frisbee.

6:00 p.m.

Walked to Henry Africa's. Didn't go in.

7:30 p.m.

Ham steak at the U.S. Mixed with the tourists on Grant. Called Sally. Out.

9:00 p.m.

Saw Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Couldn't believe it!

Midnight.

Irish at Buena Vista. Not one face made me happy. To bed at 1:30.

SATURDAY

Hitched to Tam. Thick white fog bank off the coast. City absolutely the most beautiful sight. Raced a dog. Hitched to Stinson Beach. Alive at last. Should go back to Mendocino one of these days.

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