Painting With Light

“My Large Chess Table” © R.L. Herron

One of My Prized Possesions
I was looking for a way to use this picture of a prized possession — the one-of-a-kind ceramic chess set my wife made for me, and the chess table my father-in-law built for it — when I ran across a very strange article.

In my chess magazine, of all places.

I’ve been a member of the U.S. Chess Federation for thirty-nine years and have never seen one like it before.

It seems seven chess players in New York City’s Inwood Park were ticketed recently by the NYPD. Many reports incorrectly stated the men were charged for playing chess, which would have been ludicrous in itself.

But truth, in this case, is indeed “stranger than fiction.” In actuality, the seven men were charged with being adults unaccompanied by children in a playground area.

You didn’t mis-read that.

Seven men had to hire attorneys and appear in court for violating a city ordinance. Simply by being adults, playing chess in the park on city-provided cement chess tables, unaccompanied by children.

Arrested. For playing chess.

If I thought, for one moment, the arrest of those chessplayers was justified, I would not write this article. But there was not a single child in the park — at all — when the men were arrested.

Theater of the Absurd
It would almost be funny, if it were not so absurd. Fortunately, the local community was outraged by the incident and fully supportive of the seven men.

It makes me wonder what the world has come to, when something like this can be considered a crime?

Has the constant bombardment of vile things in the news media in pursuit of ratings and readers made us so paranoid we would disallow an activity that adults and children have shared for decades?

As the article pointed out, chess is a rare discipline. Like music and math, it creates prodigies. The idea that adults and children and chess can’t mix is ridiculous.

I can hear the obsessed in the community arguing that such separation “protects the children.” I have one comment for that.

Hogwash.

I raised three sons who are marvleous young men, and I now have the pleasure of wonderful grandchildren in my life. I would do whatever it took to protect them.

And if there is anything I know is true, it’s this:

Watching your children protects them.

Encouraging them in intellectual or athletic pursuits protects them.

Allowing them to experience other generations protects them, and puts a richness in their lives they won’t get from all the XBox consoles in the world.

Put that in your ordinances, New York.

Quit being a country of overly worried people, and simply get involved. Everyone’s life will be better for it. Including people who like to meet and play chess in the park.

“Handicapped Space” © R.L. Herron

I have been blessed with a good life, reasonable health, dear friends, great children and grandchildren, a wonderful family and a beautiful wife. I also live in a community that does a lot to assist the less fortunate souls in our society.

My good fortune also extends to my country which, from its inception, guaranteed all of us so many liberties, such as the redress of grievances, freedom of speech and the freedom to worship (or not) as each individual chooses.

It dismays me to realize a significant percentage of people in America fail to acknowledge the biggest handicap we face to our human existence: intolerance.

Intolerance comes in many forms, and I am not naive enough to think it has not existed throughout the history of our country, despite our Constitutional freedoms. Native Americans have felt it, as have blacks and Jews. Many still endure it every day.

Recently it was prominently evident again in the firebombing of a mosque in Tennessee, and in the ranting of a deluded, fundamentalist preacher in northern Florida, who garnered international headlines by his announced intention to burn copies of the Koran, a book Muslims consider holy.

Sadly, he and his supporters feel justified in this act of humiliation.

But why? There is nothing inherently evil in being a Muslim, any more than there is in being a Baptist, Catholic, Jew or Hindu. All are peaceful, well intentioned creeds that seek harmony and accord, and promote patience and charity.

It is the radical, self-aggrandizing element of every creed that drives and, indeed, seems to thrive on instilling such fear and hatred of differing ideas.

But when we let unsubstantiated fears and irrational bigotry overflow into a general climate of intolerance, we give away the core beliefs that made the liberties of this nation the envy of the world.

I have enough faith in my fellow man to believe the majority of us will not let the zealots and radicals dominate our thoughts and actions.

When we start ignoring the inherent worth of each other as human beings and become intolerant of our differences, we handicap ourselves severely.

We also start living as a people, and a nation, unworthy of greatness.

“Peace Flowers” © R.L. Herron

Thirty-five years ago this month the North Vietnamese army overran the U.S. Embassy and captured Saigon.

At 8:35 a.m. on April 30, 1975, the last ten American Marines from the embassy were helicoptered out of Saigon. The long, bloody conflict that so severely divided American conciousness in the 60s and 70s finally came to an ignominious end.

I don’t think about it often any more, and I can only say that with some measure of shame. It was a friend’s mention of a new online version of the Vietnam Veteran’s Wall that reminded me I need to remember it.

Several friends, high school and college buddies, never came home from that conflict, including a young man who grew up across the street from me.

At the time, the pain of those personal losses was severe. But with more than 58,000 American casualties sacrificed to that mindless endeavor the full scope of the nationwide anguish it must have caused is almost unimaginable.

I know this isn’t the time or place to talk about the “correctness” of that war.

However, it is always time to remember those who served America. Indeed, in every war our service men and women should be remembered, particularly those who gave everything.

More than that, we would do well to ponder the words of philosopher George Santayana, who said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

We still don’t seem to have understood that lesson.