Dead or Alive?

Posted on April 19, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

The-Empty-Tomb

Botany is used to illustrate points in many passages in the Bible. God uses grass, lilies, fig trees, seeds, weeds, and grapevines to make allegorical references to the way our lives are lived. I’d learned of this old grape variety and found the cultivar after searching for a couple of years. I carefully planted the vine, but at the end of summer it looked dead. I was disappointed and wondered if I hadn’t cared for it properly. I was going to dig it up and throw it on the fire, but didn’t get around to it. When spring arrived, I was surprised to find my “dead” grapevine was very much alive!

During Easter Week, many are obviously thinking about Jesus’ crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection. I always try to think from the disciples’ perspective. Old Testament prophesies had been foretelling for centuries, even millennia, what would take place concerning the Messiah. Jesus had been telling His disciples that He was The One who was to come, and was explaining all the things that were about to take place. Yet, when the closest students of Jesus saw their teacher hanging on the public instrument of execution, dead and humiliated between two thieves, they forgot what they believed only hours before and now acted on the appearance of what they saw. No longer hearing their Rabbi’s promises, they reluctantly tried to resolve themselves to accept the physical, visible appearance of death – kind of like my grapevines.

Even as the Roman centurion at the cross proclaimed “Surely this man was the Son of God!” Jesus’ disciples – those who should most certainly be joyously expecting to see him alive again very soon – left Golgotha confused, despondent and defeated. They were convinced death had won. But how could this be? They should have been filled with life and joy as they expected the miraculous resurrection of Jesus. Instead, to the crowd of crucifixion onlookers, the followers of Christ appeared almost as dead as Jesus himself. Some of the disciples wandered off, some hid fearing they would be next and some even denied having anything to do with Jesus.

I think of my daughter telling me “Daddy – the grapevine near the barn has leaves on it!” Then I think of Mary Magdalene running to the home where the disciples were meeting to tell them she had just been with Jesus in the garden near the tomb. He’s ALIVE! The look on Simon’s face must have been priceless. Just a couple of nights before, he was so convinced of the death of Jesus that he was willing to deny knowing him without fear of having to apologize for it. Now, if Jesus was alive, the joy that should have been had been replaced with guilt because Simon doubted the resurrection promise. The question in Simon’s mind was simple; was Jesus dead or alive? The rub is, faith should have prevented the presence of the question in the first place.

Without knowing the source of life, sometimes it’s hard to tell if something – or someone – is dead or alive. However, when Jesus is that source then He says “alive” and that’s a guarantee there’s life in the vine that will prevent it from being thrown on the fire.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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The Homeless Celebrity

Posted on April 12, 2014 by curtsavagemedia
Homeless Jesus - a sculpture by Timothy Schmalz. This photo is from saintalbans.dionc.org - Davidson, N.C.

Homeless Jesus – a sculpture by Timothy Schmalz. This photo is from saintalbans.dionc.org – Davidson, N.C.

When you grow up in Los Angeles, you experience lots of chance encounters with actors, rock stars, news personalities and the like. There’s also a lot of “local color” – local characters who make the street scene interesting. Venice Beach was always like a circus with all the pretty people, the odd people, the talented performers and the muscle beach crew. Once in a while though, a particular person you met kind of stuck with you. Believability, magnetism, mystique, charisma – something about them just grabbed you. Maybe you’ve met someone like that.

There’s a story about a man from a small insignificant town. His name had three parts, but he preferred that his friends call him by his first name. He was of no reputation. There was nothing about him that should attract anyone to him. He had no connections. He was a man of no means and described himself as “homeless; without a place to sleep”. He dressed like the poor man he was – sandals and a robe with a cloak for a coat. His attire caused people to think he belonged to a religious cult. But despite his destitute life, he seemed to be known just about everywhere.

He was like a walking civil disturbance. Every time he showed-up in a town or at the beach, a crowd would gather until it resembled a political rally. People came just so they could say they heard him talk or that they got to shake his hand. He would hang out with anyone, eat with anyone, walk anywhere with anyone and discuss anything with anyone. He spoke with dazzling clarity and wisdom. A lot of people who knew him wrote books about the things he said and did. Just about everyone wanted to be associated with him. There was, however, a group who opposed him because he criticized them and wouldn’t allow them to control him or profit from him.

His growing popularity and unapproved gatherings lead to his impressive arrest record. It was as if the police arrested him just so they could take him to the station and listen to him talk while they tried to figure him out. He’d always be released a few hours later. Although this homeless man had celebrity status, no one has a photo of him – this man who rode on a borrowed ride down the highway of riches, a boulevard lined with palm trees and draped with designer garments – this man without a dime to his name but who entertained priests and scholars, governors and kings and who was reputed to have talked to angels.

Someone started a rumor about his blood being stored at some research hospital because he used to talk about it having healing powers – something like “All mankind will be saved by my blood”. It would take a lot of blood to make an immunization for that many people. Maybe that’s what killed him; nobody knows because the grave where he was supposedly buried is empty. If he did shed his blood for mankind, I wonder what he got for it. But then again, who could put a price on that kind of sacrifice?

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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s’looF s’lirpA

Posted on April 1, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

April 1st is the holiday for tomfoolery. Merry pranksters never rue this day. Uncertainty surrounds the origins of the designation of April 1st as a day to pull shenanigans and practical jokes with impunity. Iran has a practical joke day (who’d-of-thunk it?) called Sizdah Bedar. This day falls during Nowruz (Iranian New Year) and is usually on, or about, April 1st. It has been celebrated since a little before 500 B.C. which breeds speculation that this was the genesis of April Fools’ Day. I would’ve never guessed the Ayatollahs were big on practical jokes.

In France, Quebec and Italy, there is an April Fools’ Day tradition of trying to pin paper fish on peoples’ backs without being detected. Like George McFly in the movie “Back to the Future”, I was usually a pretty easy mark for the “kick me” sign prank during my early school years. I just thought everyone wanted to pat me on the back. I can just imagine myself as a school child in France. The multitude of fish pinned to my back would’ve caused me to be attacked by a herd of feral cats!

April Fools’ Day pranks run the gamut from simple set-ups concocted to amuse a few, to elaborately engineered, mass impact hoaxes involving credible celebrity verifiers, trusted media outlets Government officials, agencies, departments and even branches of the Armed Forces. Large, well known multi-national corporations and prominent movie production companies have even joined the hijinks of the super-dupers. Some of these jokes play out and are exposed within minutes – other, more believable schemes can last days, or even years often taking on death defying, legendary lives of their own.

Some of the best April Fools’ pranks are the ones where uninvolved parties, upon hearing of the prank, join in the ruse and add their own twist. Do you remember the Taco Bell stunt from April 1st 1996? It was awesome! Taco Bell’s corporate offices took out a full page ad in the New York Times (that cost a couple of bucks) announcing they had purchased the Liberty Bell in an effort to help reduce the National Debt. They said the bell would be renamed the “Taco Liberty Bell” and would be used in advertising. Of course, this caused the White House to be sucked in by the flood of angry phone calls they received. The press secretary at that time joined right in the prank by announcing, with tongue-in-cheek, that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would be renamed the “Lincoln Mercury Memorial’! No one was really hurt, and everyone had a great laugh.

That’s the point we mustn’t miss – laughter is great medicine, and, when laughter is the healing prescription, everyone enjoys playing “doctor”! When it comes to dispensing those comedic pills that get the endorphins flowing, we don’t care if we’re laughing with the crowd, or we’re the ones making the crowd laugh – everyone’s heart-health is improved and we deepen those little laugh lines on our faces that show we love to be April’s Fools.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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The Breakaway

Posted on March 22, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

ImageIt was March of 2010.  I took my daughter to the Pittsburgh Zoo.  We’d been reading about polar bears, and she wanted to see one for real.  The trip seemed like a good remedy for the many cold days we had been cooped up in the house.  We’d been watching LOTS of Olympic hockey highlights and shows about kids coming up through the leagues – graduating from pond hockey to the “big time” in the ice palaces full of thunderous fans and rafters adorned with the jerseys of legendary players.  We also watched “Miracle” which caused our little daughter to become a “USA” cheering hockey maniac – this produced some unexpected ramifications.

The trip also seemed like a good diversion to get our 3 year old daughter’s mind off the absence of her eldest brother, Joshua, who was away on a vacation to Vancouver to see the Olympics and the Para-Olympics.  Josh was on a photographic adventure to capture rare photo opportunities and to see something he’d never seen before – he was following his wanderlust and inner artist.  Josh Skyped with us daily and posted pictures from his trip on Facebook.  All Naomi knew was her brother was somewhere in Canada and she wanted him back.

We were walking around the zoo, me and Naomi; you know – right near that underpass by the merry-go-round – where the street traffic passes overhead, and you walk under the traffic through a short tunnel?  Anyway – I was pushing her empty jogging stroller and holding my tugging 3 year-old by the hand….but not tightly enough.  Naomi spotted a handful of Canadian Hockey Jersey clad young men about ten yards ahead of us.  With an unexpected power play, my little 3 year-old freed herself from my grasp, yelled “I’m on a breakaway” and took off running toward the infidels!  She caught the one on the left smack in the back of his left knee causing him to buckle and fall into his young friend to his right – dominoes;  They all fell down, lying there with an indignant  3 year-old towering above them.  I’m really glad they were laughing.  After offering apologies and receiving their guarantees of none required,  we all collected ourselves and went our separate ways to the sound of laughing and applauding onlookers.

I’m sure my little girl was just extracting her “pound of flesh” from those Canadian hockey enemies who wore the Maple Leaf Flag; the flag she saw in the pictures from the land that had her brother.  A potential international incident had been downplayed and no real harm had been done.  We saw the polar bear, bought a polar bear stuffie at the zoo shop and returned home without assaulting any other hockey fans.  Josh returned home a few days later, and all was well again.

Now, as I write this, we’re preparing to take our eldest to the train station in Pittsburgh.  Josh is moving to Seattle to pursue a dream he tasted for the first time in 2010.  He’s on a breakaway and Naomi will have to hug him and cheer from the stands as she watches him go.  It’s a good thing Seattle doesn’t have an NHL team yet.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Ever Green

Posted on March 16, 2014 by curtsavagemedia
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St. Patrick of Ireland window in St. Tomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

I find St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland and engineers, fascinating.  Facts about his age, his birthplace and the events of his life are uncertain and the subject of much debate.  We do know Patrick was born the son of a farmer and, while living in France, had a life changing encounter with God.  This experience redirected Patrick’s life and turned him into a missionary transformer of Ireland.

Patrick’s amazing adventure began as a teenager when he was captured by Irish raiders and sold into slavery.  His fate as a slave could have been worse, but God’s hand was already at work preparing Patrick for his destiny.  As a trained shepherd, Patrick was of special value to his captors and therefore was sold into private duty as a shepherd of his owner’s flocks.  The shepherd’s life was lived uncomfortably exposed and dependent on one’s own wits and on God’s mercy.  Patrick was almost always cold and wet, often hungry and constantly watching for dangers that could threaten him and the flock in his care.

Once a young adult, Patrick managed to escape Ireland and is believed to have fled to France where he stayed for a time before returning to his native Britain.  France was another divine appointment for Patrick.  Town records show he spent at least two years studying at Auxerre, France while visiting Bishop Germanus.  It is believed this is where Patrick was converted to Christianity before he returned home.  Once back in Britain, Patrick began to struggle with his knowledge of the pagan nature of Ireland and their need for God.  He began to have dreams of Irish children reaching out to him and believed this was God calling him back to Ireland.

Patrick may have not have been prepared to deal with the resistance he faced from the leaders of the pagan druid clans of Ireland.  But, what he lacked in strategy, he made up for with the tenacity of his faith and conviction.  Patrick’s training as a shepherd of sheep prepared him well to be the spiritual leader and shepherd of Ireland’s lost masses.  Many of the druid kings conspired to have Patrick killed because of his apostolic works.  Omnipotent God, in His great mercy, protected Patrick and his fledgling church, oftentimes confusing the minds of those who plotted against him, and blinding the eyes of his pursuers causing them to walk right past him.

The longevity of Patrick’s ministry is evidence of God’s protection and blessing upon his works.  The seeds of belief planted by Patrick have grown into fields of faith, ever green and producing fruit in abundance for God’s kingdom – even missionaries following Patrick’s example.  It is fitting that Celtic monks memorialize St. Patrick by reciting his “Lorica” or “Breastplate Prayer” – the eighth verse reads:  “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”  St. Patrick’s legacy will forever remain alive and ever green.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Slow Food

Posted on March 12, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

ImageDo you have fond memories that are associated with the enjoyment of food?  After busy, fast paced weeks of school activities and parents working long and changing shifts, I loved the opportunities weekends gave us to slow down, to break the routine and prepare and eat meals with family and friends.  The combined efforts of many happy and talented hands in the kitchens transformed our homes from launch pads into gathering places where we could literally spend the whole day or evening visiting and grazing from the gastronomic bonanzas laid out before our eyes.

For many, those days of gathering for leisurely meals with friends and family have become distant memories.  Life has sped up, and so has our food.  Slow is now a negative thing.  We get angry if we have to spend more than 10 minutes in the drive-thru waiting for the “food” that will feed our hungry, hyped up families.  These are not really “happy meals” though – they’re more like “empty meals”; full of calories, but empty of just about everything else.  We don’t even know where this food comes from; we just buy it and eat it.  Fortunately, there’s a movement that’s working to combat this.  The following is shared with permission from slowfoodusa.org:

Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization with over 100,000 members in 150 countries who are linking the pleasure of good food with a commitment to their communities and the environment.  The concept of conviviality is the heart of the Slow Food movement: taking pleasure in the processes of cooking, eating, and sharing meals with others.  The movement was founded in Rome by Carlo Petrini in 1986 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

“We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods… A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life… May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency. Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.” (Excerpt from the Official Slow Food Manifesto, as published in “Slow Food: A Case for Taste” in 2001).”

The food we eat, and how we eat it, grow it, transport it, trade it, prepare it and share it becomes a physical and emotional part of who we are and therefore should be considered as forethought, not afterthought.  Food is a link to our past and our cultural identity.  It’s part of our celebrations and a component of recuperation and restoration.  Slow Food is the way we can rediscover the joys of understanding, growing, preparing and savoring the foods that are part of us.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Boxes

Posted on March 7, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

ImageIt seems like life is made-up of all kinds of boxes.  There are lunch boxes that sometimes contain juice boxes.  There are check boxes on forms, drop boxes at video rental stores, squawk boxes at drive-throughs, kill boxes on battle fields, pencil boxes, shoe boxes, mail boxes, in boxes, out boxes, batter boxes, boom boxes, dump boxes, jack-in-the boxes and the proverbial “think-outside-of-the” boxes.  Whenever someone says to me “We need to think outside of the box”, I half-jokingly say “Wait!  There’s supposed to be a box?  No one told me anything about this “box” you speak of”.

I’ve moved from place to place many times in my lifetime.  The move was usually preceded by several days of going to stores looking for cardboard moving boxes.  We then spent days, or weeks, packing all our stuff into those boxes and then loading those boxes into our truck (sort of box shaped) and taking load after load of packed boxes to our storage unit – another box.  Once we found a place to rent in our new town, we would hire a moving company to take their really big box on wheels, empty our storage unit and deliver all of our boxes to our new address.  A lot of times, we never really finished unpacking after a move.  When our houses began to get cluttered, we put our excess stuff in boxes and stuck the boxes in an extra room or a shed – or rented another storage unit.

Our bodies are types of boxes.  They hold all our memories, our experiences, our stories, our skills, gifts and talents.  When those boxes wear out, someone usually puts our worn out boxes in big shiny boxes, and buries those boxes in box-shaped holes in the ground.  Sometimes, after that, friends and family gather at the box we lived in and they go through our boxes of stuff to try to learn about who we were.  That is, unless, everything we were about wasn’t kept put away somewhere in a box.

My wife shared a quote that makes me sad every time I hear it;

       “Most of us go to our grave with the music still inside us.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

She then shared a quote of her own that made me much happier and, frankly, made much more sense to me;

       “Sing, dance, shout, write, paint, be, do…..dobedobedobedo.” ~ Sharon Savage. 

Exactly!  None of those things belong in boxes; they are public expressions of what it means to be alive!

Boxes are nice to have if you need to carry lots of things from place to place.  They’re also nice for protecting things until you need to take those things out and use them.  But, things that get put in boxes forever tend to disappear.  If those things are forgotten, it’s the same as if they never existed.  Let’s not be like “most of the people” Oliver Wendell Holmes laments about in his quote; don’t die with your music, stories, gifts and talents still inside your “box”.  God gave them to you for a reason – make sure you let them out and share them with the world.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Those Little Hearts

Posted on February 24, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

ImageIt’s almost Valentine’s Day again and that means candy!  The choices used to be pretty limited; a rectangular box of chocolates or a heart shaped box of chocolates.  These usually had to be purchased at a candy store or a flower shop.  That all changed once the candy bar companies got involved.  Now, you can get Reese’s hearts, Nestle’s Crunch hearts, Butterfinger hearts, marshmallow hearts – even plastic hearts filled with M&M’s or jelly beans, and all of these can be purchased just about anywhere. .

 Those little candy “conversation hearts” have been around for over a hundred years.  I was never very fond of the flavor of the hearts, but the messages were always clever.  Over the last several years, it seems the sayings on the hearts have been changing.  Instead of “call me”, they say “text me” or “message me”.  Instead of “true love”, some of them say “recently divorced”.  You can even have hearts custom printed with your Email address or website name on them – a big message for a little heart.

Those little heart shaped boxes always surprise me with the amount and variety of chocolates they can hold.  You would think “Here’s this little heart made out of cardboard.  How much can it possibly hold?”  I can usually find at least a couple of my favorite chocolates in those little heart boxes.  I guess that just shows you can’t judge what’s in a heart just by its size.

The same holds true for children’s hearts.  They have these little hearts; hearts more full of innocence than experience.  Yet, there are more ideas, more questions and more dreams written on those little hearts than there seems to be room for and written with words young children may not even be able to adequately express.  They are not deterred though.  Their dreams and ideas are as real as those candies you can hold in your hand, but there’s no wax in THIS chocolate.  A pure sense of wonder is their launch pad.  These little hearts have not yet gone stale with cynicism or regret.  They take promises as the gospel and they are true believers in the unbelievable.  Be careful if you hold one of these little hearts in your hand.  They can be crushed as easily as they can melt.  They’re not yet “tough” enough to shrug off harsh treatment.  They take some special care, but they’re worth it.  You’ll never find little hearts that are any sweeter.

What happens when we get older? Where does that sweet innocence go?  Why do our hearts sometimes grow stale?  Maybe when we “grow up”, we stop looking for unexpected joys in small things.  Maybe experiences put an end to questions.  Maybe “facts” replace faith.  Maybe clever explanations extinguish our sense of wonder.  Sometimes, as our hearts grow bigger, our dreams seem to grow smaller and never match the big dreams we used to dream when we had those little hearts.  Maybe we can learn to be young at heart again this Valentine’s Day.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Popcorn Nation

Posted on February 9, 2014 by curtsavagemedia
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Photo courtesy of the Popcorn Board @
http://www.popcorn.org

How do I love my popcorn?  Let me count the ways.  I like caramel kettle corn, cheesy popcorn, Frank’s Red Hot with garlic popcorn, dark chocolate & sea salt kettle corn and good old fashioned movie theater style buttered popcorn.   Popcorn has become one of the top snack foods in the world and Consumer Reports has reported that popcorn is one of the top choices for Super Bowl snack food.

Popcorn is a special variety of corn known as Zeya mays everta.  The kind of corn you find in the produce section at the grocery store is sweet corn.  It won’t pop if you heat it up – it just cooks.  Field corn, also called “dent corn”, dries and becomes “dented” as it stands in the field after it has finished growing.  After it’s harvested, the kernels still contain some moisture but wouldn’t “pop” if they were heated.  Only popcorn “pops” when heated.  The pericarp, or “hull” (skin) of the kernel is thick enough to allow the moisture inside the kernel to turn to steam and build pressure as it is heated.  Once the little kernel gets pumped up to about three times the pressure of a car tire, it “pops”!

Popcorn has been around pretty much since the discovery of fire.  It is believed to have originated in Mexico.  Aztecs used popcorn in many of their ceremonies and rituals and made head dressings and necklaces from popped popcorn.  Our popcorn rituals today are a little bit different and usually involve some type of sporting event or a movie.  The only things we decorate with popcorn these days are Christmas trees.  I’m pretty sure if I wore a popcorn necklace, I’d be attacked by birds!

Popcorn popping has changed over time too.  Throwing ears of popcorn into a fire was the original technique – gritty AND nutritious!  Yum.  My grammy used to throw some lard and popcorn into a cast iron pan, cover it with a lid and let ‘er rip.  The sound of machine gun fire coming from the kitchen alerted us to the imminent arrival of our favorite snack.  Once “Jiffy Pop” came out with their aluminum pan stove-top poppers, the cast iron was retired.  When we traded our S&H Green Stamps for our first electric air-popper, the stove-top never saw popcorn again.  Grammy didn’t live to see microwave popcorn which debuted in the early 1980’s.

Microwave popcorn is so convenient.  It smells wonderful, but it’s not much fun – especially if you accidentally allow it to burn!  I was reading the contents on the microwaveable packages and I realized this was not my old popcorn.  I asked my daughter “Naomi, do you want some old fashioned popcorn?”  We put the big cast iron pan on the stove-top, poured in some olive oil and popping corn, covered it with a lid and put the heat to it.  In a few minutes, we could hear the kernels pinging off the metal lid.  We tried to spy a look and popcorn went flying across the kitchen.  We both laughed.  In a few minutes we had fun, loud and wonderfully healthy popcorn; and I think Grammy would be smiling.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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Stuck in Traffick

Posted on January 30, 2014 by curtsavagemedia

I used to have a half-hour commute to work.  Most of that drive was on the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway, aka “The Shoreway”, which was comprised of Ohio Route 2, US Routes 6 and 20 and Interstate 90.  Since I drove the Shoreway at prime commuting time, most of my commute was spent in traffic.  I didn’t like sitting in traffic.  Having learned to drive on the Harbor and San Diego Freeways in California, I usually resorted to some creative driving to free myself from the gridlock.  No wonder I score so well on the “Fast & Furious” arcade game!

A good kind of traffic happened when Steve Winwood, of the Spencer Davis Group, left that band to form the band “Traffic” in April 1967, and then trafficked his services to form “Blind Faith” in 1969.  Ralph Bakshi brought us his acclaimed film “Heavy Traffic” in 1973, and Status Quo caused “Heavy Traffic” on the UK rock charts in 2002.  Our vernacular has even run into interpretive traffic in regard to the use of the words “traffic” and “traffick” and their interchangeability.

When your internet connection is slow, it’s said that the server is receiving a lot of traffick.  People who sell things are often called “traffickers”.  Pedalers traffick their wares at swap meets.  Sometimes, people sell things illegally.  Pirated media and “knock-off” clothing items are trafficked on the black market, over the internet and from the trunks of cars.  Illegal drugs are trafficked in creatively covert ways to get them into the hands of the addicts who support that trade.

What was once called slavery is now known as “human trafficking”.  Human trafficking is the sale of humans, usuaImagelly for the purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labor or organ harvesting.  The International Labor Organization estimates that forced labor generates approximately 31 billion dollars in revenue for the companies using trafficked forced labor.  Furthermore, it is estimated that there are over 250 million exploited children worldwide who are being forced to fight in foreign armed forces or who are being used in prostitution, pornography or the illegal drug trade.

These trafficked individuals don’t always come from some poor, third world country or even some poor part of this country.  Many of them are just like you and me.  Some of them were kidnapped or taken prisoner as a result of a military invasion of their homelands.  Others become indebted to someone and resort to selling themselves in an effort to repay the debt.  Some simply fall into a trap set on social networks to catch inquisitive and unsuspecting young people.  Not all human trafficking involves physically transporting the individual to another location.  There might be bondage and forced labor taking place in your own neighborhood.

January was Human Trafficking Awareness Month.  Organizations and governments around the world are beginning to understand the severity of this injustice and are slowly beginning to take steps to intervene and end this abuse.  This is only because of public outcry.  We must continue to speak on behalf of all who are enslaved by human trafficking.  Until ALL are free, we will be stuck in immoral traffick.

© 2014 Curt Savage Media

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