We've finished another holiday season; you know, the six week “festival of consumption" beginning with Thanksgiving and ending with New Years. It has always confused me with how little regard we are held by big business. After all, we finance all the Wall Street mergers and acquisitions with our personal credit card debt. Maybe it’s because we do it so giddily. Some folks actually wait overnight in sleeping bags for a store touting a big sale to open.
But there is a spiritual element to the holidays. Walking around New York’s Central Park on New Year’s Eve, I was overcome by the twinkling miracle of the LED. Wow. Have they enhanced our lives or what? I have to tell you, when I was a kid I just didn’t see this coming at all. Flashlights. Commercial signs. Video Displays. But. the holidays and special events are where these little guys really give life a boost. As my wife and I sat on a park bench, thousands upon thousands of fellow humans paraded by covered in battery-powered Christmas lights. People wore blinking glasses heralding 2012. Shoes lit up. Hats lit up. Noise-makers flickered and changed color. Sitting near a tribute to John Lennon installed in the sidewalk of a little circle, we witnessed person after person leave a string of flashing LED’s as a token of their love and grief for John. In fact, last night it seemed the full sum of humanity was flashing and twinkling in an electronic celebration of how sweet life can be. LED’s can say so much, and these modern times are really something, no? B.O.
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