Left to right: iPhone 4S (in a Mophie battery case), Romy’s iPhone SE, my iPhone SE 2020

I purchased my first smartphone – an Apple iPhone 4S – back in November, 2011. It replaced my trusty StarTAC flip phone, which I had purchased about a decade earlier.

I don’t rotate through phones like some folks do.

However, I recently took the plunge again and I am now running an Apple iPhone SE.

(As an aside – what’s the deal Apple? The original iPhone SE came out about four years ago, and only resembles the new version in ways the iPhone 8 resembles the iPhone 4 or 5. Why not the SE2? With the exception of phones, Apple is keeping most products unversioned: iPad Air, MacBook Pro, and now the iPhone SE. Come on….makes it confusing when buying a used version or accessories. It just seems lazy more than anything else.)

While the iPhone SE 2020 just came out, it is based in the iPhone 8 form factor, and does not have the fancier cameras or photo processing power of the iPhone Xs or iPhone 11s.

So why not “get the best”, especially since I may be with this one for a long time?

Pretty simple:

1. I like smaller phones – I want a phone I can slip in my jeans pocket and so on (see also No. 4, below).
2. I like the home button – Call me a Luddite or whatever, but I find it a highly functional mechanical feature.
3. The price is right – I still believe that the iPhone(s) that comes out either this or next fall will be a game-changer. Then I might be willing to do a quicker refresh – but not if my most recent phone was $1100 dollars. This one was $450 with the upgrade to 128G of storage (old phone had 32G).
4. I’m not a phone fanatic – I greatly appreciate my devices and all they can do, but I just don’t live on my devices as many do. I stream movies on my home TV, I still have a bitchin’ desktop computer with a large monitor, I read dead-tree books. And I do have an iPad to stream clips of this or that while we’re standing in the kitchen.

Add into the mix that the new iPhone SE runs the same chip (A13) that powers the very latest iPhones (11s), it’s a pretty good deal for someone like me, who needs a new phone but doesn’t need all the bells and whistles.

Do I wish it had a better camera (and more of them, like other models)? – of course.

Do I wish it had a sexy, full-front display (but somehow still have a home button)? Sure.

But remember – I had an iPhone 4S – I’m getting a way bigger screen, much better camera and vastly improved battery life and processing power.

I made the right choice, for me. No buyer’s remorse at all.

Postscript: This is the first time I’ve moved data from one phone to another. I’m good at doing backups, however. I was able to set up my new phone from a “last night” backup of my old phone with the greatest of ease. Everything, including app settings, were just sucked in auto-magically (not passwords, obviously – which is good). The most impressive part was the import pulled down the Google Chrome browser, and when I fired it up, it had the two tabs I had open on the old phone!

Well done, Apple!

The coronavirus death count keeps climbing in the US – over 1,000 were recorded yesterday, Tuesday, April 7, 2020.

One hit hard – John Prine.

While I was never a John Prine fanatic, I was aware of him almost from the beginning, playing the eponymous first album over and over again. There was something magical about this album – written, as Kris Kristofferson noted on the album’s liner notes, as an over-achiever: Twenty-four years old and he writes like he’s two-hundred and twenty.

Look at the songs on this one, first album by a 24-yearl old: Sam Stone, Angel from Montgomery (which Bonnie Raitt made her own), Paradise, and – last but certainly not least – Hello In There.

(NOTE: I usually have bad luck embedding YouTube videos on this blog – I put them up and YouTube seems to cancel them the next day. But here’s a brilliant version of Hello In There by Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe and Billy Bragger performing the song is Glasgow, Scotland.)

Prine’s more recent work didn’t do as much for me, but the first hall-dozen or so albums are beauts.

I had a chance to see him in the late 1970s – around the time of the Steve Goodman produced Bruised Orange. I didn’t know the city (Chicago) that well at the time, and I can’t ever recall where he was playing, except it was a club – Earl of Old Town? Old Town School of Folk Music? Probably Amazing Grace, but I really don’t recall.

I do recall the music and, especially, the lyrics:

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
— Sam Stone

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
— Spanish Pipedream

If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago
…
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say?
— Angel From Montgomery

Dear Abby, dear Abby
Well I never thought
That me and my girlfriend would ever get caught
We were sitting in the back seat just shooting the breeze
With her hair up in curlers and her pants to her knees
Signed just married
— Dear Abby

Who is going to write with this wit, empathy and down-to-earth humor?

Who is going to fill the shoes of Maywood, IL’s most famous postal carrier?

Do you reember the one-hit wonder group called The Five Man Electrical Band?

They had only one hit that I can recall, “Signs”, released ~1971:

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery
Breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that
Can’t you read the sign?

I thought of this song as I have been building out a new photo gallery – Signs of the Time.

In other words, Signs in the Time of Coronavirus.

Stores, libraries, parks (parks!) closed until further notice.

Various venues listing limited hours.

Restaurants doing take-out only, and usually for limited hours.

Retail outlets posting rules about in-store population density, accepting no returns, and often offering hours dedicated to the elderly (the most susceptible to respitory illnesses, like coronavisurs).

Many signs have a “Stay Safe/Stay Home” message (often churches).

These are all good messages for a good reason: To flatten the curve and save as many lives as possible, we need a concerted effort to stay home and reduce to a bare minimum anything close to human contact. While this will not solve the problem, to not take these painful but necessary steps would be foolish and inhumane. To greatly simplify, these social distancing measures are to help delay a rapid spread of this disease – for which there is currently no cure or vaccine. By keeping the disease from spiking, this allows hospitals to treat those afflicted with COVID-19 – or a heart attack – in a less rushed, better-supplied manner. This will lenghten the infection period, but this is balanced by better care for those adversely affected.

But it’s kinda a bummer. Both because we are (were) living in an age of instant gratification (“Let’s go out for Thai!”; “Let’s pick up a [book/movie/faucet]!”), and because the reason for the self-isolation/shelter in place is so serious and unlike anything the US has seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918 (and that kind of stayed below the radar due to the heart-wrenching death toll of World War I).

Which is why I spent the time capturing a handful (and will continue) of such signs. These are the reality of today, and – hopefully – they will just be a snapshot of this period tomorrow. A remember when? gallery.