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Monthly Archives: November 2015

11/22/63

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by michael schinker in John F. Kennedy

≈ 1 Comment

Seems as though most of my memories
of John F. Kennedy are archived in
grainy black and white.

The televised campaign debates with a
sweaty Dick Nixon, who looked like
a stiff cardboard prop in the shadow
of the bigger than LIFE magazine
war hero bred for achievement by
Massachusetts’ premier political family.JFK speech

The bright but bitterly cold inaugural
on the steps of the Capitol, frozen under
a nor’easter snowstorm’s fresh blanket
of dazzling white, a distinctive
backdrop for a fledgling president’s epic
“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not”
speech, challenging us in a valiant
call to arms against tyranny, poverty,
disease and even war itself.

The televised series of White House
tours graciously hosted by a sophisticated,
shyly soft-spoken Jackie who assured us
that it was just as much “our house.”

The candid photos of handsome toddler
John John playing hide-and-seek
under the desk of the most powerful
man on earth.

The who’s-going-to-flinch-first live TV broadcast
to an on-the-edge-of-our-seats audience by a
stern and deadly serious JFK demanding that a
raging Russian remove his nuclear missiles
from Cuba – or else. We held our national breath,
praying, all eyes fixed on the doomsday clock.

And then came that day in Dallas.
It started out with smiles and waves
– and color.

22 Nov 1963, Dallas, Texas, USA --- President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Minutes later the President was assassinated as his car passed through Dealey Plaza. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Like heaven’s giant spotlight suspended
in a flawless azure big-as-Texas sky,
a beaming golden noontime sun illuminates
a cheering crowd at Love Field,
all reaching out for a once in a lifetime
touch from the chief executive’s hand.
The First Lady, wearing that now iconic
strawberry pink and navy trim
Chanel wool suit and matching hat,
cradles so tenderly an ill-fated bouquet
of red roses, too soon abandoned on a
blood spattered seat of the presidential
Lincoln Continental where the life of
Camelot’s king was lost and everything
suddenly faded back to black and white
again. For a very long time.

Is Paris burning?

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by michael schinker in ISIS, terrorism

≈ 1 Comment

The question was asked by Adolph Hitler in August of 1944 after ordering his military governor/general Dietrich von Choltitz to destroy the City of Lights rather than have it fall into the hands of General George Patton’s Third Army, just miles away from liberating the heart and soul of France.

After the horrific attacks of last night on specifically targeted groups of an innocent civilian population –– couples and families at a restaurant casually enjoying a meal, exuberant young people at a rock concert, spirited soccer fans –– again Paris, and France and Europe and indeed all of western civilization are in the cross hairs of madness. Jihad is in the early stages of metastasizing from the traditional borders of the Middle East and is headed to a town near you and me.

A force to be reckoned with from the mid-thirteenth century until World War I, the Ottoman Empire with Islam as the official and only religion left a permanent bloody fingerprint on the West. The conquering Turks absorbed, adapted and modified the economics and sociology of the lands they occupied and the cultures of the peoples they dominated. Yes, the corollary effects on literature, architecture, language and art can still be seen today from Spain to Constantinople. And yes, there was an aspect of genteel sophistication to the ways of the Sultan that may have to some degree balanced out prejudicial brutality against Christians and Jews.

Not so with ISIS. We’ve seen news reports and videos documenting these barbaric henchmen in action, destroying irreplaceable religious and cultural artifacts in ancient sites throughout Syria and Afghanistan, archaeological relics that survived for millennia, now broken into rubble. They want to erase every trace of our history and replace our future with a worldwide Islamic Caliphate, one that excludes everything that we love and hold dear: our faith, our family life, our freedom. Now becoming increasingly frequent and ambitious, these terrorist acts show the unmasked, lethal side of modern radical Islam and its agenda. What is it that we don’t understand about “Death to Infidels?”Paris

The Eiffel Tower went dark last night, maybe saving it from being an easy target, maybe just to show that the spirit represented by one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world was severely wounded: the joie de vivre that has made Paris the exciting, romantic magnet it has been for centuries. Perhaps today we need to acknowledge our fraternité with the shocked and mourning citizens of our nation’s oldest ally, France. Maybe now more than ever we all need to recognize and declare loud and clear, “Je suis Paris.”

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