Thursday, January 25, 2018

A sight to remember

Today, I saw something truly rare. I hope I never forget it. Not even for a day.

A utility crew closed a lane of our street and the alley, forcing me to detour. It was a glorious day in Chicago so I didn't mind the extra driving. To run my errands, I had already opted to take the surface streets instead of the freeway so I could absorb the unseasonably warm weather. I circled the neighborhood to enter our garage from the other end of the alley.

Creeping along the parked cars, I made sure no pedestrians were approaching. Suddenly, I stomped the brakes. There she was. A very young student holding a little white cane with a red tip. She was less than four feet tall, wearing glasses with very thick lenses. Apparently, legally blind, she stabbed at the pavement and leaned her head into the alley and listened. Her instructor was a grey-haired man wearing his photo ID on a lanyard. The drama unfolded.

The little one continued to feel around with her cane, following her instructors' guidance. Every time she tapped the pavement and felt the surface with the cane's tip, the man provided cautions and insights. The scene continued for about 30 or 60 seconds, and then the instructor acknowledged me and smiled.

The girl toddled forward, crossed the alley and edged up the street. Her guide followed closely.

I crept up the ramp toward the alley and stopped at the side walk. As she struggled along the pavement, I could now see her little legs were hobbled. Yet, she took measured steps and continued.

Shaking my head, I had to admit I almost never think about the blind and blind children. And I have no excuse for my absentmindedness. Some 30 years ago, I produced and directed two TV feature stories about blindness. One focused on leader dogs and learning to walk and live with them. The other highlighted blind adults who play a form of baseball by hitting a large, electronic, beeping ball and running to beeping bases. Imagine that. The game is called beeper ball.

When music legend Stevie Wonder delivered an inspirational talk to his alma mater, Cass Technical High School in Detroit, I collaborated with a team to capture the event and a wide-ranging interview with the blind Motown great.

Yet, I still manage to forget that nearly 40 million people wake up legally blind every day, about 1.3 million in the United States alone.

Today, a tiny, courageous person gave me pause and made me shameful that I take for granted my sight and so much more. I thought about the parents of those children who can't see, or hear or speak. How tough it must be to teach them and how challenging it can be for disabled kids to learn.  It made my heart heavy, and grateful for our healthy sons and granddaughter.

But the heaviness was quickly lifted by the image of that splendid little person finding her way up the road of life without the benefit of clear eyes. A sight to remember and cherish.



Sunday, January 21, 2018

Unmasking loneliness

Since making Chicago our home in June 2017, we've discovered two things about the weather. Gloriously mild summers share the stage with frequent breezes that slap you into reality in the winter. After all, this is the Windy City.

Unlike my home town, Detroit, where virtually everyone travels encased in cars, folks walk here. Sizzling or drizzling, snowing or blowing, people hoof it to work, to school, to the bus stop, or navigate stairs to ride the elevated train. And that reveals individual style and personal expression.

So when the temperatures climbed into the mid forties to end the third week in January, it was as if the whole town was unmasked. Chicagoans don't play when it comes to winter wear. Most look like bank robbers with faces bundled in scarves, ski masks and high collars that tickle nostrils. Suddenly, a few young dudes appeared in shorts. Mostly, I could see smiling faces as the streets were filled with strolling singles, couples hand in hand, seniors and juniors savoring the temporarily mild temps.

It's a welcome sight to take in a stranger's smile in the middle of winter. After the holiday season and the flu bug flexes its muscles, icy isolation can settle in as we hunker down in our caves and catch cabin fever.

This week, the international media widely reported the United Kingdom has a Minister of Loneliness, because some 9 million Brits feel frequently alone. That's nearly one of out six. In a Harvard Business Review article, Vivek Murthy,  U.S. Surgeon General from 2014 to 2017, reported that loneliness in America is a health epidemic, with rates of isolation doubling since the 1980's to 40%. All this despite our hyper-connected, technologically addicted global society.

When everyone has a phone you'd think we'd feel more in touch. These days, marketing robocalls may be your most frequent friend.

Imagine if everyone with a phone took five minutes a day to call someone who's trapped in a prison of loneliness. Just five minutes to say, "Hi! How are you? What's new?" A text or e-mail is nice. But there's nothing like the sound of the human voice in our ears. They're designed to cradle the frequencies of laughter, tears, and words like "I care" and "I love you."

St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a scholar of poverty, schooled by a lifetime of work drenched in the sweat of compassion for the poorest of the poor. She said, "In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one."

The little nun in her blue-striped sari has been dead for more than 20 years, yet she foresaw the spreading germ of spiritual isolation.

The good news, it's a curable disease. It's time to take off your mask and smile at someone you don't know. Talk to someone who needs a companion. Listen to those who need their voices to be heard. It will melt the ice on your winter.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

If only he had lived.

At church this evening, prominently positioned near the front there was a framed portrait on an easel. It was a painting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His image graced the front of the song sheet the greeter handed everyone who entered. And King's face dominated the front page of the weekly parish bulletin.

We were visiting Old St. Pat's Catholic Church in Chicago's West Loop, an affluent and vibrant faith community that cracks a smile to welcome everyone and genuinely breaks a sweat to serve its neediest neighbors.

I couldn't help but wonder, what if Dr. King had lived? What if his assassin had missed? How would things be different?

King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, husband and father of four was only 39 when sniper James Earl Ray fatally shot him. The transformational Baptist minister, like those he emulated, was slain for loving peace too much. A devout believer in Jesus Christ and a disciple of Mohandas Gandhi's tactics of nonviolent resistance, King was devoted to truth and was convinced that peaceful protests were the most potent weapon against oppression.

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed," King wrote in a letter in 1963 while sitting in a Birmingham, Alabama jail cell. He was arrested after leading a nonviolent campaign to end segregation of lunch counters and in hiring practices. Can you believe that American businesses actually incurred the cost for extra dining space, separate restroom facilities and drinking fountains in order to keep races separate? King's campaign drew national attention when Birmingham police used attack dogs and fire hoses to abuse peaceful protesters, jailing many, including hundreds of schoolchildren.

But King and his principles of resistance to force recognition of social issues and earn reasonable negotiation would win the day. He was a brilliant man. I didn't know King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia at age 15 through a special program for gifted students. He dabbled in medicine and law before pursuing a divinity degree at his father's urging, and later, King, Jr. earned a Ph.D. in theology from Boston University.

The remarkably eloquent and inspiring author and speaker was focused on man's relationship to God. His emphasis was not on a quest for social progress or the power of man to reason. King's core faith rested essentially in living by God's guidance.

His pursuits were not limited to the advancement of African-Americans. King championed the plight of all the poor, including the destitute of Appalachia. He protested the Vietnam War, and navigated the complex challenges of racial discrimination in Northern states, leading a fair housing fight in Chicago.

In 1968, just three years after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King was  gunned down. Forty years later, America elected its first known biracial president whom voters awarded a second term. April 4, 2018 will mark the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination. Were he still alive today, he would be 89, the same age as my mother.

So much has changed for the better in America, yet our nation continues to convulse with spasms of its  racial affliction. A stubborn demon. We have accomplished so much divided, imagine if we are ever truly united. It happens rarely, usually in response to a common enemy.

Tomorrow we celebrate the legacy of a man who never held public office, never collected a salary from taxpayers to reward his efforts for galvanizing a nation for goodness. This was someone who was incarcerated without ever brandishing a firearm or tangling with an officer of the law. In fact, at the Pettus Bridge outside Selma Alabama, he and his followers knelt in prayer when faced with confrontation.

 Oh, the power of peace. Oh, if only he had lived.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Suffer the little children

This year, Hollywood's award season will be different.

Not just because the entertainment and media industry has been rocked by the scandal of sexual harassment. In 2017, filmmakers had more important things to say than usual. The topics range from World War II Europe on the brink of collapse amidst savage Nazi occupation (Dunkirk & Darkest Hour) to the searing drama of a modern-day midwestern American community scorched by racism, rape and murder (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri). Toss in an iconic battle between presidential corruption and the free-press (The Post), a twisted police crime that degenerates into execution-style murders accompanying an historic urban riot (Detroit) and the nauseating truth about J. Paul Getty's monumental, grotesque greed (All the Money in the World) and you have just a taste of this year's lineup of socially-conscious stories. 

Tonight, I'm praying for an upset at the Golden Globes, and later at the SAG Awards, the DGA Awards and this year's Oscars. I'm nominating a little film that probably won't get many gold statues even though it may have done more to reveal the soul of our nation than all the big budget blockbusters combined. 

Have you seen, The Florida Project? If you haven't, make sure you do. Not just because Willem Dafoe delivers a triumphant performance that could win him a best-supporting actor nomination and trophy. But more importantly, because director, co-writer and editor, Sean Baker, has captured the tragic childhood experience of so many innocents in America. 

Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch have magically milked reality to craft a screenplay so raw and authentic it defies the art of moviemaking. If Dafoe weren't onscreen, you might think The Florida Project is a documentary and you're watching real people, not actors. The rest of the cast is unknowns but they are convincing and captivating. 

No spoiler alert necessary. I'm not going to retell the story here. This is a movie about the children of America's working poor, many whom live in motel communities and in families that struggle to pay their weekly rent. The story focuses on six-year-old Moonee (Brooklyn Prince) and her single mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite) an unemployed stripper who herself remains trapped in a dysfunctional childhood, perpetually immature and rebellious. As she tells Monnee, "I can't get arrested again." You will just want to shake Halley and hug Moonee and the other kids who live in the purple-painted inn near Orlando's Disney World.

Anyone who has interacted with the working poor will recognize these people as genuine and the stories as frustratingly accurate. Some of the families in The Florida Project do amazingly well with so little. But this is not La-La Land. The beauty of this film is in the disarmingly sweet behavior of little kids finding joy in the most mundane daily events and the Good Samaritans who resist justifiable cynicism to reach for their compassion in order to protect children and help their parents who appear out of control and beyond help.

In motel rooms nationwide, there are children and grandchildren who deserve much better than another slice of pizza or hot dog for dinner while watching Mom or Dad meltdown or stone out. These little ones do not choose their parents.

Will we choose to find a way to help them? The Florida Project is Hollywood at its best. It's unforgettable.