The Wall

Today, while talking to the kids about this photo taken by Shannon of Celitha Mendoza in Trinidad, Cuba, a discussion of the barriers that can keep people in or keep people out reminded me of "The Wall," a haunting autobiographical book about growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia by author/illustrator Peter Sis. To Sis, freedom was found in music — Louis Armstrong, the Beat Poets, the Beach Boys and the Beatles.

"Looking back, I can see how easy it is to brainwash a child. We were like sheep...until music from the free world — rock 'n' roll and the Beatles made a crack in the wall... and everything seemed possible..."

Sis's story is illustrated primarily in black and white and red, until freedom arrives and the rainbows of color finally appear. Sis wrote about the changes that came during his lifetime. “Now when my American family goes to visit my Czech family in the colorful city of Prague, it is hard to convince them it was ever a dark place full of fear, suspicion and lies.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Marcus-t.html?ref=authors

A Blue Marble will make its way to Berlin next week with Renee Suttner-Vale and family, and I wonder if pictures can help us to understand what remains of the infamous Wall that one divided a City into East and West.

It's so hard to imagine that there ever was such a Wall...

Last year was the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, and there was an amazing art happening held to commemorate the occasion. What an inspired idea to call upon our memory of simple childhood games! We play marbles for keeps, we anticipate every move in a chess match, and we can't help delight in the fall of the domino Wall.

Daddy's flown 'cross the ocean
Leaving just a memory
A snapshot in the family album
Daddy, what else did you leave for me?
Daddy, what'd ya leave behind for me?
All in all it was just a brick in the wall
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall

— from Pink Floyd's The Wall