Black & White Friday

I looked through yesterday's bloated newspaper advertisements but couldn't find anything in today's mega-sales that could get me out of bed at midnight. I already have an old TV, spare vacuum cleaner bags, coffee filters, and wood pellets for the stove. I'm set.

In fact, if I really need something, chances are above-average I'll buy it online, probably from one of the same businesses that ran a print ad in the paper. I simply can't won't join the half of our population that goes bargain-hunting *The Day After.

Plus, my to-buy-for list is much smaller than it used to be—another sign we're aging, I'm afraid. Family and friends, now gone, and children who've outgrown toys. Hey, kids, it happens. Thus, like many of you, when I want something for myself these days I go out and buy it—I don't require a traditional holiday for that.

Freed from seasonal shopping stress (a self-induced delusion that mocks real stress—like not having a home or food to eat, after you've lost your job), I've been going through my photo archives (happy-speak for that mess on the hard drives) with an eye out for images I've ignored. It's true, I think, that we spend considerably more time taking pictures than looking at them afterwards. There's always a special few, The Keepers, that we justifiably print and frame, or publish on-line, but what about the rest of the shots we took alongside those?

When I signed on to 500px recently I decided to place some of my forgotten and overlooked pictures there, ones I hadn't showcased elsewhere (with a few exceptions). My small collection is a hodgepodge at the moment, bits and pieces from here-and-there, but it's great (and sometimes surprising) fun to sort through old visual treasure, and it sure beats a day at the mall.

*Did you know the moniker Black Friday originated in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, coined by their police department to describe the massive traffic jams and mob scenes that tied up the city on the day after Thanksgiving? This is the type of trivia you have time to look up on Google when you aren't actually out shopping.