SOMEWHERE AN INDIVIDUAL USES A 1939 PROOF JEFFERSON NICKEL VALUED AT $160 TO PURCHASE A CAN OF SODA; LEAVING IT IN THE MACHINE TO BE RETURNED AS CHANGE UPON SUBSEQUENT PURCHASES.
The sounds of
sprinklers and chainsaws
all summer long
all summer I suppose
wealth is what we make it
and we make it
unemployed for a summer or so
I simply cannot remember
how we forgot about the effects of afternoon sunlight¬¬¬
and flittering grass in the late day wind
the one that feels like a precipitous fall
and how the definitive change we needed
was our changing definition of value
In general, value can be understood as the moral principles and beliefs, or accepted standards, of a person or social group
for whatever it’s worth
Thomas Jefferson said:
“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money”
but I treasure cool days and nights like the ones that find me here
with cloudy calm companions
and a touch of apprehension just to taste
In Mathematics value means magnitude or quantity; the number represented by a figure, symbol, or the like: the value of an angle; the value of x; the value of a sum.
let’s look at the price of coca-cola remaining a nickel from 1886-1959 as a case study
part of the problem in raising the price was the cost of replacing vending machines that accepted only nickels
and so you see how
sometimes keeping everything the same
represents the best option
there will come a point when the best option is no longer an option
and that is what I believe prompted the call
the 6 month mantra of
2 weeks notice
2 weeks notice
2 weeks notice
In Sociology value refers to the ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard; these values may be positive or negative.
in 1939 Herbert Blumer argued that in society there is no clear distinction between attitude and value...
and it is our attitude that is of value in this discussion
and to our ears come the words
“quality of life decision”
from our social circles, all those who surround us, and the orange day-glow in the clouds of 11pm
I say “searching for a state without light pollution”
with more clouds on the ground than in the sky
so that we might watch the fireflies
signal to the stars or satellites above
hoping to harvest the valuable information
even if the messages themselves cannot be decrypted
In Ethics value is defined as any object or quality desirable as a means or as an end in itself.
In the conclusion to his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber writes that we are born into involuntary servitude to mechanized industry:
“For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”
from the land of coke and steel
from the loins of the those with the factory worn hands
my father and his father
taking 40 year tours
tending the never-ending
river of glass
I learned the lesson
with my swing-shift formative years
and I’m not looking back...
or to the side of the industry lined interstates
that we’ve navigated to make it this far
In the Fine Arts value is the degree of lightness or darkness in a color or the relation of light and shade in a painting, drawing, or the like.
when we stood in front of Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” at the Tate
painted in England during the period of his social withdrawal from France after “Madam X”
maybe that’s where and when I got the idea
so long ago, of value being formed by a study in contrasts
it’s the time of day here, or is it night
when the community starts to turn on their lights
that it is easiest to see inside
to televisions, dinner tables, and the bulbs above their heads
as we drive by further on into the night
or is it the day
when the lights and the sun
hang on opposite ends forming an equilibrium
it is the equanimity we previously lacked
In Phonetics value denotes quality or the phonetic equivalent of a letter, as the sound of “a” in hat, sang, etc.
it is when you now pronounce my name here
it is the “e” sound
the first to colonize disturbed lands
that now rises up
and floats away
like the seed dispersed ruderals
that populate the fields of our evening walks
this, all the proof I need for our constitutional
[ANTIQUE NICKEL, VENDING MACHINE - performance / sculpture]
2010