Picket fences

Tomorrow our nation celebrates the most American of holidays, Thanksgiving.  It is suppose to be an opportunity for Americans to reflect on the bounty of freedoms and plenty our nation provides andbe  thankful for what we have.  The holiday's icons are Macy's parade, football, turkey and pumpkin pie, family gatherings and now the official start of the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday, oozing back into the last few hours of the day.

Another American icon is the picket fence, which symbolizes the dream of home ownership and the opportunity for prosperity. The chance for the American dream has been maligned with the economic collapse of the last few years.  We have demonstrations in most cities, large and small, against corporate greed which now is becoming an icon of our times.  The rich -- the 1 percent -- get richer; the rest -- the 99 percent -- get poorer.

Despite being mired in war and economic uncertainty, our country and its people are resilient.  There are stories everyday of individuals overcoming adversity to rise out of the ashes like the Phoenix.  And there is always someone worse off and many who suffer life and death challenges.  This perspective was presented to me yesterday as I read "Minamata," a 192-page chronicle of pictures and words by American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith and his Japanese wife Aileen. 

The Smiths spent three years in the early 1970s living with and documenting the lives and events surrounding one of the true injustices of a large corporation's greed, irresponsibility and arrogance toward humankind.  I recommend that anyone who can get their hands on the book to read it.

The crux of the story is that a large manufacturing facility in the southwestern Japanese city of Miramanta, through industrial discharge into the adjoining bay, poisoned the fish in the area with high levels of mercury.  The population's economy and primary food source came from those fish.  Several thousand area inhabitants suffered immensely from the symptoms of the poisoning including contorted bodies and destroyed minds that often lead to permanent disfigurement, catatonic existences and death.

The company wanted to protect its interests to such a degree that even Mr. Smith was beaten while trying to document events surrounding the outrage.  His injuries helped to accelerate an early death at the age of 60 for this master of the photographic essay.

These are true human tragedies and we can be thankful everyday that our daily challenges often pale in comparison.  During the 1980s when the strife in Lebanon often presented the catch phrase of encouragement for someone down on their luck that things could be worse, after all they could be living in Beirut.  In the 70s, they could have been living in Minamanta, or Cambodia.  In the 90s it could be the Sudan.  Or now it could be Afghanistan or North Korea.

But we live in America and as this picture of a slightly worse-for-wear picket fence that I made on my morning walk today represents, might not be what it once was, but has the promise that it could be fresh and bright and a talisman for prosperity for all again.