It’s time for the back-to-school blues

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

And greens and reds and . . . Apricot, Aquamarine, Mulberry and even Goldenrod. Sound familiar? No, these are not options on paint chips at Sherwin Williams. They are crayon colors. Who hasn’t had a box or two in their school desk or backpack? If many decades ago like me you went back to school in the Fall with one of the original Crayola 64-Packs, those more exotically named colors would have been included among the choices in your arsenal for creative expression. Maybe because I was artistically adept as a young grade schooler I couldn’t wait to pop open that box, to inhale the unique, unmistakable aroma of that amazing pallet of colors trapped in wax until I released their magic onto a blank piece of paper the first time we had art class.

Since Binney & Smith first began producing Crayola crayons in 1903, many colors over time have been cycled in and out. Earlier this year the company replaced Dandelion with yet another hue of blue. Some colors have remained the same shade but just experienced a name change over the years. Peach for example, previously labeled as Flesh, was probably renamed to be more politically correct and less racially exclusive.

To me the most disappointing aspect of the coloring experience was that of course with use, the points disappeared. Then it was a matter of peeling back the paper, and in the absence of some kind of sharpener, using the blunt end to try to render a crisp line. I suppose to my fellow elementary schoolmates that wasn’t a matter of great concern. But it bothered me. Maybe it was this disposition for perfection that led me to a career not in fine art but interestingly as a graphic designer. When I started, the profession was known simply as “commercial art,” the creative arm of the advertising world. When technology took over in the 90s, creative possibilities got a lot more sophisticated, and limitless. Eventually I gained the advantage of learning that my hand on a mouse could portray a world of imagination that my little fingers gripping stubby crayons tried to but could not. An old dog can learn new tricks.

Just thinking about my school days back in the 50s makes me wonder if the old adage “The more things change, the more they stay the same” might be a bit true. I grew up during the Cold War. We didn’t obsess about a wall to keep out undesirables, but there was an Iron Curtain between Russia and the rest of us. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. So was a pack of Camels. We had three-channel black and white TVs with rabbit ears reception that never actually helped get all the fuzz off the screen. I had a little battery operated transistor radio with an earpiece that let me listen underneath my bed covers at night and fall asleep to the latest rock & roll sounds beaming out of WLS Chicago. The only air conditioning we had in dad’s car was four windows rolled down all the way.

So, since then obviously much has changed. Some things are easier, and better. But maybe not human nature. Maybe it’s the same, because here we are today hearing about the threat of nuclear war. It was my generation they taught to “Duck and Cover” under our desks at school in the event of an atomic bomb blast. (Did we really believe that would help?) We worried, prayed and lived unscathed through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and now we will again endure what seems to be perennial saber rattling by another enemy opposed to truth, justice and the American way (the principles our comic book Superman fought for every issue).

I guess there are only a couple options for dealing with the current situation.

A new national poll finds that public concern over escalating tensions with North Korea is widespread, and that nearly three in four Americans are concerned the U.S. could get involved in a full-scale war. So we could live in fear, hanging on every “Breaking News” bulletin that crawls across the bottom of our television screens. Or we could ignore it, like it’s just another intensely dramatic action movie that eventually comes to a reasonably satisfactory ending and we get up out of our seats and go home to a normal life. Starbucks is still open. And the gym. Tomorrow’s a new day, right?

My plan, however, will be the same for this threat as with every serious concern that comes into my life. I will rely on the Bible’s admonitions to “Be anxious for nothing.” “Fear not.” “Be strong and courageous.” I think so many stories and verses from scripture could be summarily translated from Hebrew and Greek like this: “God says, ‘Hey, relax. I got this.’ Period.”

So tonight when my head hits the pillow, I’ll remember Psalm 4:8 which declares, “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.” (KJV)

Peace and safety. Those are good things.

Worth a thousand words

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by michael schinker in Aylan, Refugees, war

≈ 2 Comments

We’ve all heard the expression. A picture is worth a thousand words. But this particular photo puts me at a loss for any amount of words. Where media coverage phrases like “ongoing migrant crisis” fall feebly short, it bluntly conveys an ugly reality of just how desperate the situation facing many refugees has become.

It’s one of several photographs that went viral earlier this week, hopefully shocking the world from complacency and ignorance concerning the plight of millions of people trying to escape the seemingly endless horrors of war in the Middle East. The photos and the dreadful circumstances they portray are a “stark testimony of an unfolding human tragedy that is playing out in Syria, Turkey, and Europe, often unwitnessed,” wrote Kim Murphy, a news editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Well, now thanks to this heart wrenching photograph we are forced to witness a disturbing glimpse into a still frame of this unspeakable calamity, and we see more than a distant, inconsequential-to-us humanitarian crisis out of control.

What we see is the appalling outcome of a fiberglass boat packed with 12 desperate people aboard capsizing off the coast of Turkey, after just minutes into their journey. Their destination – the Greek island of Kos, only 2.5 miles away. An estimated 2,000 people are making the same short but dangerously rough sea crossing every day. But these folks, including three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, his five-year-old brother and their mother, all perished in an effort to escape the hell on earth that is now Syria, drowning instead in the Mediterranean, ironically their hoped for passageway to freedom and a new life in the West.

What we see is little Aylan, washed ashore on the beach, like debris cast off by a careless humanity. When power hungry men time and time again rationalize the insane depravity of bludgeoning the life out of each other, either with clubs or swords as in centuries past, or with the far more sophisticated and effective modern weaponry of our age, we all suffer. The bitter vintage of warfare is also drunk far beyond the blood soaked battlefield. The grim harvest of brutality spares neither mothers nor their children, and in this case, the iron scythe of death too soon struck down an innocent Kurdish family hoping for a new life beyond the grip of an insatiable monster known as terrorism.

What we see yet again is another vivid portrait of a senseless tragedy. We feel again that deep, despairing heartache, and ask again the unanswerable question, “Why?”

We will find no adequate consolation in this world for suffering and loss, especially one of this magnitude, the death of a beautiful toddler, just like one of those little boys we see playing ball down the street in our own neighborhood. Yet there is always a glimmer of light, even in what may appear as utter darkness, when we rise above the most brutal circumstances of life with faith. “I have told you [about the realities of this life] so that you may have peace in me,” Jesus said. “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Rest in peace, Aylan. You are finally free. Free indeed.

War. What is it good for?

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by michael schinker in Tolstoy, Ukraine, war

≈ 2 Comments

Of course the answer is “Absolutely nothing” . . . a sentiment expressed by musical artist Edwin Starr in a 1970 song that became the biggest hit of his career. He transformed an overlooked album track by the Motown psychedelic soul group The Temptations into his own number one hit, boasting the top position on the U.S. Billboard charts for three weeks. It eventually sold over three million copies, all the while widely adopted as an anthem for the anti-Vietnam war movement.

Fictional character Elaine Benes in a Season 5 episode of Seinfeld makes reference to the phrase while riding in a taxi with her boss-publicist Mr. Lippman and a fussy Russian writer in tow named Testikov. True to form with her propensity for spouting witless gaffes, she blurts out that Tolstoy’s first choice to title his epic War and Peace was actually, you guessed it, War, What Is It Good For? followed by an unashamedly hearty, “Huh!”

And that’s how we might well characterize it, war, good for nuthin’ – in a protest song, or in a sitcom for a bit of cursory humor, the subject actually so horrific that we dare not even glance at its reality lest we gouge forever into our psyche images unimaginable. But maybe we should look.

I came across this photograph recently, saved on my computer along with others over the years I found strikingly provocative and moving. I think it was taken by an anonymous reporter covering the war in the city of Odessa, Ukraine. But it could be anywhere, anytime.

Look. Is she not the quintessential picture of misfortune, the hapless victim of yet another armed conflict, a tragic consequence of the savagery of men so eager to shed blood over an idea or a plot of ground? She is so much more than a statistic, though, or a feature for the evening’s world news report. She’s an old lady in a babushka who should be at home, making soup, peeling potatoes, lighting a holy taper in front of an icon, saying her vespers. But look. Here she is, running with a dog, like a dog, with whatever she can carry from a life broken to pieces by a good for nuthin’ war. And where are you going all alone, little grandma? Where are your sons? Are they buried in the cold earth too, like your dreams? The dreams of a beautiful young girl, long ago playing so carefree in the schoolyard, your white dress catching the summer sun’s beams, and your hair so bright and free, flowing like corn silk in the breeze.

Tolstoy wrote, “To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.” And so we shall press on, in war and peace, loving God and life in the midst of suffering, hoping for a realization of the prophet Isaiah’s vision when men shall beat their swords into plowshares, and war will be practiced no more, when suffering will be forgotten, and the lady with the babushka will be young, bright and free again.