Green Screen

View from My Window! I swear!

My friend Teresa introduced me to a lovely Facebook group  “View From My Window.” VFMW consists of people who post photos of (wait for it) the views from their windows. I have been enjoying gorgeous pix from Tel Aviv, from sunny Spain, from Cape Town and San Diego and Amsterdam. There are rooftops and mountain peaks and swimming pools and fields of flowers out these various windows. The posters add cheery comments about their necks of the woods, and everyone is super nice and supportive. It does make the world seem a little smaller (and a whole lot more attractive), and gives me some hope that we haven’t lost everything in the pandemic.

I was inspired to join their ranks and post The View from My Window. Alas, the three weeks each year when the view is a pretty one, have ended, with the decline of our azalea bushes and the shedding of the cherry blossoms. Our only foliage is provided by hardy perennials, as we haven’t planted a flower in decades. We use our summers spent at the Delaware shore as our convenient excuse. However, this year we’ll be home until late July, and I will wager we will still not drop a single seed or bulb into the ground. So things outdoors at Seyfrieds’ are heading straight back to humdrum, quickly.

However, all is not lost, thanks to the miracle of technology! My buddies on the endless Zoom meetings I attend often have a changing series of jazzy backgrounds visible behind them, not just the same old print on the wall always featured over MY shoulder. The first time I saw the Golden Gate bridge behind one of my Confirmation students I admit I was very confused, ditto when a friend appeared to be speaking from his snow-covered deck in early May. But now I get it! It’s all a green screen bit of magic!

Maybe I can do the same in my new FB group!! Do you think if I shared a tropical beach scene with swaying palms, that I could get away with labeling this “taken from my front stoop”? Or identifying Notre Dame Cathedral as our local Lutheran church? Who from Jakarta or Timbuktu is likely to actually visit me and learn of my gentle deception? And if anyone does question the real location of my photo of the ambling Irish sheep, or the colorful Florence street scene, I can tell them that I dwell in an enchanted village, where every house has the scenery they dream of. After all, If someone can name a street  “Valley View Court” with no valley to view, or a town “Roseville” when there’s nary a rose in sight, why can’t I have my little fantasy?

I’m off to select my next backdrop! And while I’m at it, no one much has seen me for the past two months…won’t they be amazed by my sudden resemblance to Victoria Beckham? I used my isolation time wisely, what can I say?

My new look