Thursday, June 3, 2021

Out and About in the Neighborhood

Various forms of social media now bedevil just about every writer I know. We have to decide what to participate in from among the many options, how to participate, and find the discipline to maintain the effort. All this is in the service of promoting ourselves and our books. It sounds ludicrous and it is. So, how do I, for one, go about it?

About a year ago I signed up for Instagram. It was obvious at the outset that most writers were using the site to post about their books—lots of covers and writer selfies. I have occasionally posted the cover of a book or a magazine containing one of my stories, but that pales pretty fast, at least for me. I enjoy posting pix of stacks of books I’m reading, or a photo of strangers deep in a book at a local park, but I’ve learned Instagram has more to offer. 

With the pandemic worsening, I wanted to enjoy what I could do and not think always about promotion. I used my walk to entertain myself, and I’m very glad I did.

At the beginning of the pandemic people in my neighborhood were learning to hunker down, avoid the playground, and find ways to entertain themselves and their children. First, a group of over three dozen families settled on decorating front doors for spring and Easter. I photographed a number of them, and posted those. 


Next came the teddy bears and other stuffed animals propped up in windows for children to spot on their walks or bike rides. Not exactly a treasure hunt but close enough. I had a good time finding those, including some life-sized bears settled on porches and rows of stuffed animals filling windows. 


Gardens bloomed and animal statues popped up under the azaleas and by the tulips. I’ve never been one for garden creatures but I’ve come to enjoy the hunt to find them in other people’s gardens, and I have pulled out an old sprinkler in the form of a tin frog to use in mine.


But my favorite of all my discoveries during this time are the flamingos. A woman several streets away has nine plastic flamingos which she presents in various poses—dining out, dancing around a maypole, going on vacation, sitting around a campfire. She puts time and effort into these tableaux, and I love them. We have never met but occasionally if she’s there when I walk past, I tell her how much I enjoy her work.

I have spent years walking around India with a camera, looking for interesting shots and unusual perspectives, but the flamingos have taken a special hold on me. And I’m not the only one. In staid, reserved New England, no one would expect bright pink plastic lawn toys to become popular, but they’re popping up now throughout my little city. I’ve come across three other “families” of the birds but no one else has animated them in scenes as creatively as the first neighbor. The original nine are still the standouts.

Why does this matter? The last year didn’t seem a problem for me and my husband. We’re both retired and engaged in our long loved creative work, he with photography, and me with writing. But the limitations on our activities have forced us, just like millions of others, to stay close to home and that means noticing more of what is happening around us. Unexpectedly I learned a little bit more about myself this past year. I have liked my neighborhood since we first bought our home in the late 1970s for practical reasons—location. I can walk to the library, restaurants, the train, and friends. But now it means a lot to me for other reasons—for how people live and interact, how much creativity goes into their ordinary lives that we don’t always notice, and how closely neighbors who don’t know each other well will reach out to collaborate and cooperate during unusual times. In previous years, being wrapped up in my job and my fictional worlds, creating stories and meeting deadlines, has meant paying less attention to the worlds around me, those of my neighbors. Walk two to five miles every day along the same streets, past the same houses, and you are guaranteed to see and learn more. And what you pick out from among the thousands of images that pass in front of your eyes will tell you even more about who you are and how you see the world. But it will also teach you a lot about the people around you. Some are more creative than others, and some are far more houseproud than others. 

Community, humor, joy, generosity come to the fore in this collection of streets and homes. And I intend to keep looking for how it is expressed long after the pandemic has receded.



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