There is an ongoing dialogue between those who appreciate modern art and those who don’t. The detractors most commonly argue, “I could take a canvas and splatter it with paint like Jackson Pollack, or paint simplistic stripes of color like Barnett Newman, or paint an entire canvas white like Kazimir Malevich, and call it art.” Thus, diminishing the works’ merit, relative to the proposed ease in producing them.

The customary defense is, “But you didn’t.” Perhaps most noteworthy is that he or she didn’t do it first.

It is not the aesthetic significance that often justifies a modern painting’s value in the annals of art, but the creation or concept of something new. 

Given a malleable piece of wire, we could all form it into a paperclip.

But we weren’t the first to do so.

Annually, two tomes were delivered to my door: the White Pages and the Yellow Pages. I used each often in seeking a service or someone I needed to call. They were unwieldy yet invaluable. Finding a place for them, while living in a small apartment, was almost a chore. But I could not imagine living without them. Notes were made in the margins, some of which I needed to recopy before replacing them with the latest editions.

It never occurred to me that these staples, in virtually every American home, would slip into obsolescence. I also assumed other items, like phone booths and film, would be around forever.

Convenience plays a huge factor in replacing or updating objects, and advancements have unquestionably been made, but certain items seem less improved. If I do not place my hands precisely under the electronic faucets’ sensors in certain public restrooms, no water falls.

I am hoping the future will be tempered by those who discern the proven designs of old with the promise of the new.

I generally begin my letters with “Dear.”

If it is a business context, I use a formal “Dear Sir or Madam.” If I know the name of the person, I will begin the letter with a “Dear Ms. or Mr. So-and-so.” Of course with family and friends I use a first name and at times a “Hey” or “Hi”. For many years this convention has served me well.

Attending a writing workshop a short while ago, the teacher instructed us to address a letter to a particular publisher with, “Hi Dan.”

“Hi Dan?” I thought, “I don’t know him and he does not know me.” “Isn’t that extremely informal, perhaps even rude?” I inquired. “Not at all,” she breezily replied. “Besides, he will read the letter because he thinks that he knows you.” But what will he think of me when he discovers that he doesn’t know me at all? I thought, but dared not ask. And how many times will this undoubtedly intelligent man fall for the same ruse?

I have come to learn that this professor’s advise is not hers alone. Increasingly, I am noting a familiarity from strangers. People are addressing me in letters and on the phone using only my first name. It seems to be more and more the norm.

I will need to adjust, but for now my terms of address and my expectations for others are seemingly passé.

The hands dance before me. There is grace to the movements-rehearsed and repeated until the vocabulary is fluid, quick, precise. and efficient. The gestures do not extend a centimeter more than necessary-neither above nor below, neither left nor right.

The performance is only movement. There are no spoken lines.

I am enthralled, engaged in the unexpected show before me.

Does this man, with a gentle stoop and gray hair, working in a Lower East Side deli, know that he has elevated the making of a sandwich, and wrapping it in wax paper, to an art form?

My father returned from studying a summer in Maine with a package. I was nine. It was a small clay figure in four parts: a circular head with a painted smile, a halo, a skirted body with wings, and a bell that chimed. At the top was a leather cord knotted and garnished with bluish grass. 

It was called a People Lover. She came with a booklet telling some tale of her good deeds that I have since forgotten.

I immediately hung the People Lover up in my room.

Years later the leather cord broke and it fell. A piece of her wing cracked apart. My dad repaired it with glue.

The People Lover, despite my living in many places still hangs in my home: a small clay figure in four parts: a circular head with a painted smile, a halo, a skirted body with wings, the seam where it broke still visible, and a bell that chimes. At the top the knotted cord with the bluish grassy garnish is now brown. 

Through the years, after some scrapes and falls she’s sturdy still.

The Daily News Sunday Comics were always folded, one inside the other. The innermost layer marked the week of my last visit, the outermost layer was the one I read first.

My aunt who completed the Sunday New York Times Crossword in pen and graduated first in her class made no distinction between highbrow and lowbrow pleasures. She was just as likely to recite Wordsworth as she was the comic strip Calvin and Hobbs. Each Sunday she bought the papers, read them thoroughly, then saved the entire comic section for me.

I cherished these colorful pages year after year, but then as a teenager I hinted that reading comics was childish. “You are never too old to read the things you love.” she said.

Our tradition continued for many more years.

Feeding the boa always drew a small crowd. My dad was the nature counselor. He educated the campers on the local plants and animals, took them on hikes, and cared for the rodents and reptiles kept in cages and tanks.The boa he fed with live frogs and mice. Nature was tamed between these walls, but the garbage collector, who lost two fingers of his right hand to a raccoon, was a warning of the wild just beyond.

In June, a day or two after school ended, my family would pack up “Big Red” our much loved convertible Impala and drive to a camp in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. We left the city behind.

My first six summers were spent there. I was the youngest child at the camp and enjoyed considerable doting. Once I was given a huge, swirled, multi-color lollipop, so beautiful, the size of my face, I dared not taste it.

But my treasures were the raspberries, blueberries and blackberries ripe for picking, the Golden Rod, Queen Anne’s Lace and purple thistles perfect for bouquets, the grass and yellow buttercups that tickled my bare ankles, and the jewelweed that popped when squeezed just so.

That last July Fourth was an endless day yielding to a star filled night. All of us gathered around the lake and watched a display of fireworks my father helped ignite. We sat on blankets craning our necks to take in the entire spectacle while the still bright embers extinguished into the near, dark waters below.

Music, for a time, was devoid of imposed imagery. Listening to a song I was free to make any associations I wished except perhaps while looking at the album cover. Then along came MTV. It revolutionized how I thought about popular music. Images were now chosen for me. I felt something unique and personal had been irretrievably denied.

Certainly a similar comparison between books, before the advent of film, can be made. Readers did not compete with someone else’s depiction of the characters they envisioned, except perhaps for those with illustrations.

It is hard to shake Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara or Madonna singing, “Like A Virgin.”

Once we witness an evocation through a lens, our perception is unequivocally changed.

Something lost? Something gained?

Every once in a while I speak with someone who is certain that humans were brought to earth by aliens. Their resolute convictions often stem from an assortment of personal observations. They speak of the impossible sophistication of the Nazca Lines in Peru, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids and other striking sites. One person I recently met said that the diversity of the human species was clearly evidence of coming from another planet. “How else could people who began in one place, Africa, turn into four different races without being dropped off from a spaceship?”

But I look at humankind and see extraordinary diversity everywhere. Subtle differences among ourselves cannot be reduced to the four races I learned as a child in books. Biodiversity abounds in flora and fauna. We seem to fit in perfectly among the rest.

And I can never doubt the human intellect while astounding evidence of its capability is all around us.

No, I will stick to the less titillating prospect, that we are all products of evolution and luck.

I am fascinated by our efforts to decorate and embellish objects since ancient times. The designs are often inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds us.

Our desire to adorn objects and ourselves is not dissimilar to the feathers of a male bird attracting a mate and flowers enticing insects to pollinate.

Our definition of art continues to evolve.

What I’ve deemed to be superfluous rather than essential are perhaps vestiages of our attempts and will to survive.