Pandemic isolation leads to creativity for AARP volunteer

AARP Virginia volunteer reporter Charles Blake has been exploring his creative side while practicing social distancing. Have you been focusing on a hobby while self-isolating? Charles would like to tell your story, too. Contact him at CharlesBlake1938@gmail.com.

I’ve had an on and off love affair with digitally enhanced photography since the first time I retired in the early ’90s. Well, to tell the truth, I wasn’t really retired back then. I was actually undertaking the hardest job I ever loved, taking care of my mother during what turned out to be the last seven years of her life, as she lived with Alzheimer’s disease.

Ms. Anne, my mom, was born in 1912. She was a preacher’s kid, a brilliant African-American Virginian with impossibly high standards. She didn’t settle, she waited until 1952 to find and wed the right man. Ms. Anne wanted desperately to be a mother, and she waited until God finally answered her prayer in 1955. It still shocks me that I was the answer to someone's prayer! Our bond was incredibly deep! Mom loved me until the end. She eventually forgot how to swallow, but she never forgot me.

Being young adults from humble economic origins, coming of age during the Great Depression, both of my parents, African-Americans with Master’s degrees, valued money and managed to save enough to live the American dream. Taking a leave of absence from my administrative job at Cornell University to care for Ms. Anne full time raised my young family's standard of living considerably. I’ll never forget the thrill of finally being able to move out of our apartment by writing a check to buy a house with professors as our neighbors on Ithaca’s fabulous West Hill!

The ’90s were a time I had plenty of time and money. Mom was physically healthy until the end when she simply stopped swallowing. She was providing yet more blessings for her darling baby boy and his family. The hothouse Ms. Anne provided for me allowed for the first bloom of my digitally enhanced photography.

When mom died in 2000, I was cast adrift. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I considered myself an artist. I spent a lot of money printing and framing my digitally enhanced photography. I showed at The State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca and in shows locally, but I didn’t need to consult my Tuck School of Business M.B.A. to realize that my art wouldn’t support me financially.

Time for a change! Something completely different, I enrolled in the Central Square Driving Academy. I learned to drive the “big rigs,” but not well enough for over-the-road-driving to become a longtime occupation. Ms. Anne’s double Ivy son was just beginning his blue-collar education. I developed great appreciation for how difficult working-class life is and how skillful successful blue-collar workers are.



Two years of over-the-road truck driving lead to divorce. I relocated to the summer home my parents built on mom’s share of grandpa’s farm in the beautiful Northern Neck of Virginia. After bumping around a bit, I found out that my Commercial Driver’s License was more valuable than my fancy college degrees for finding work in rural Virginia. Digital enhanced photography died for me around 2003, when the cables my new laptops use aren’t compatible with my expensive large format printers.

Fast forward to April 15, 2019, when I retired from Charterhouse, a psychosocial day program for people with mental illness and/or intellectual disability. I again have plenty of time, unfortunately not plenty of money, but enough to live a comfy life with my country wife. Slowly, digitally enhanced photography was resurrected, and now in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I find it peaking with me spending time each day working on images.

I hope you enjoy and appreciate these images! While I have yet to invest again in a large format quality printer, this older artist would love to substantially augment his Social Security by selling his art!