In spite of the Shelter-in-Place ordinance, we have been allowed to take our dog Max to his dog sitter, where he goes three times a week. This has given us the opportunity to focus on our work. When I recently brought him to his second “mum”, Jennifer was ready to go to the park, along with her eight “babies”. In the afternoon the dogs go to a different park with her husband Jim. When she opened the door of her van, Max jumped in and settled in on his favorite seat. Typically, when they get back from the park, Max settles in his big chair in her living room, and if some young dogs try to challenge him, it is enough for him to growl, and the order is established.

I think that love is the answer (or solution) for co-existence. I have easy proof of that statement. On August 8^th, my wife Elfa and I are going to celebrate our fifty-third wedding anniversary. In our lives, we are always together. In September, we are going to celebrate thirty-five years since we jointly started our mortgage company, Pacific Bay Financial. We both have different personalities and different interests, and do not always agree (at least not right away). But our love for each other, our family, our friends, our co-workers, our clients, our city, and our country has help us compromise and find what is important and lasting.

The common expression “every cloud has a silver lining” means that even the worst events or situations have some positive aspects. On vocabulary.com I learned that the phrase seems to be from Milton’s 1634 poem “Comus”. This expression came to my mind on the third day of the Shelter-in-Place order to protect us and the other fellow humans from being exposed to the Coronavirus, which has become an international crisis. On that day, March 18th, 2020, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel called it Germany’s biggest postwar challenge. The Coronavirus became the only subject the world has been concerned and talking about nowadays. No one knows exactly when the pandemic will be over, in three weeks or, G-d knows when. Meanwhile, many lives have been changed. Pessimists expect the worst. Optimists do not know what to expect. I belong to the latter group, and live by the adage, “Seek for the seeds of victory in every defeat.” Therefore, in the middle of the unknown, I decided to look for the “silver lining”. When I googled “Silver Lining of the Coronavirus”, I found stories without any imagination. So I decided to go back into the past to find out what visionaries saw in the future. 

Turns out that to predict the future, to find the “silver lining”, requires very special individuals.

We live in times when everything is possible. Though most of us do not know what tomorrow will bring, somehow Jules Verne knew. All of his predictions came true. Therefore, use your own imagination and fantasize about unexpected silver lining that you would like those challenging events bring to all of us.

I was recently driving on Balboa Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Richmond District, and when I crossed 24^th Avenue, I noticed a large black sofa on the sidewalk next to a homeless person’s tent. When I drove back, something got my attention. On the sidewalk of 24^th Avenue, there was an oversized outdoor toilet placed six feet from a hand-washing station. And some distance away, I noticed a young man in white overalls and a facemask sitting on a folded chair in the shade, looking down at his mobile phone. Next to him was a white bucket with cleaning supplies. I decided to park my car, but on the corner there were two signs restricting parking to protect the residence of three young men. Through the years I have photographed many homeless people, but never had an opportunity to talk to them. While I was photographing the owners’ possessions, which for some reason included two handicapped chairs, children’s toys, junk and even some artwork, the tent’s occupier stepped out and started a conversation with me. Adam told me that he is very intelligent, good at math, but he just does not like to live by the rules set up by baby boomers and would like to poke holes in their system of living. He also mentioned that the world we live in was designed by people who had structures in their lives, but his generation does not. “There is no mystery left in our lives”, he said. Then he pointed out to their camp and the attendant and said that the money the City spends on the arrangements could easily pay to put them up in a hotel. Though it seemed like there was plenty of food stored in the tent and there was a small stove, perhaps he was referring to the free alcohol and marijuana, which was distributed to the homeless addicts at lockdown hotels.

The cost of dealing with homeless in San Francisco is growing every year. In the 2019-2020 budget proposal, the figure hits more than $364 million, which many expect to be higher. It seems that San Francisco’s liberal-minded supervisors, who like to make social experiments on the taxpayers account can learn some math from the Chelmites.

One fellow had very good news – his wife gave birth, but he was puzzled and went to the local rabbi for advice. “Rabbi, I heard that it takes nine months to give birth, but I’ve only been married for three months.” The rabbi pondered for a moment. “You have been married to your wife for three months, and for how long was she married to you? Three months, and how long were you married together? Three months. If you add it all together, you will have nine months.”

As to support my story, last Sunday, May 24^th, Phil Matier wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “When narcotics cops left, Tenderloin drugs flowed” and Willie Brown echoed him in his Column, where he mentioned “Cleanup Call”. Sometimes I wonder, how did Chelmites manage to get to San Francisco?

There was a number of events within a few days which led me to this story.

It started with my daily reading of photography books. This time, it was The Definitive Collection of Robert Capa. As a war photography photojournalist, he participated and photographed many world events between 1932 till 1954. He was killed while covering the war in Vietnam. The book contains 937 images, many of which showed not only soldiers and battles, but also of many refugees. Seeing them and thinking about the uncertainty and challenges of their lives compared to what I/we have to go through during the COVID-19 quarantine, I decided just to count my blessings.

You may heard of Dr. Victor Frankl, a neurologist, psychiatrist and follower of Sigmund Freud, who after surviving as a prisoner of four Nazi concentration camps, wrote his best-selling book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, published in 1946. In the book he describes his experience in those camps using a psycho-therapeutic method, which involves identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then imaging that outcome. He observed that some people who had a reason to stay alive for a specific purpose in their lives, survived. However, after the liberation, some experiencing dissolution, committed suicide. One of my favorite sayings is, “Seek for seeds of victory in every defeat”. Therefore I count my blessings.

P.S. Actually what triggered the title and the story, was my recent encounter in Golden Gate Park. While driving through, I noticed a person sitting on the bench, reading. I stopped my car and took a number of images. Then I saw a few other people, who came here to enjoy moments in their lives, or perhaps to count their blessings as well. 

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One of the benefits of staying home was that while I was communicating with clients and our staff, I had more time to walk with Max, to photograph and to work on my images. And another benefit was that I could browse through many art and photography books in my private library. One of them is titled “The Life Millennium: The 100 most important events and people of the past 1000 years”. It was published by LIFE books in 1998. I learned a lot of fascinating facts, I will write about some of them in the future. This week, I will share what I learned about “The Black Plague”, which started in 1348, and in two years killed a third of Europe’s inhabitants (online I found different numbers which amounted to 50 million people or 60 percent of Europe’s entire population).

In the book I also found another interesting connection with Asia in a story titled “Gutenberg Prints the Bible”. “German goldsmith Johan Gutenberg succeeded creating his masterpiece, a run of 200 gorgeously typeset Bibles, in 1455 he unleashed an information epidemic that rages today.” However, “Gutenberg didn’t invent printing: The craft emerged in 8^th century China. He also didn’t invent moveable type, which was invented by the Chinese printer Pi Sheng around 1040. Nor did Gutenberg invent moveable metal type. The Koreans did in the 14^th century. What Gutenberg devised was the first Western moveable-type system that worked so well that it remained largely unchanged for 350 years.” No one knows what will happen over the next 350 years, not even what will happen tomorrow. But I am sure that overall everything is going to be good.

P.S. I’m writing this story by hand on paper, which was invented in China, with a pen, which was probably made in China, as well as many photography books in my library. In spite of the proliferation of the electronic reading instruments many people, like myself and those four book readers I encountered, still prefer the original version.

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