Picture This

Maybe Kim Jong Un's first glimpse of a promising future based on something other than purging all his military and political competitors, starving dissidents in re-education camps, and destroying Seattle with a nuclear missile was the video President Trump showed him when they met in Singapore.

      Unlike President Obama, who grew up inspired by the vision of multicultural ethnic and religious groups living side-by-side in Indonesia and Hawaii, Trump's New Jersey-New York line of sight was much different. How would things be different if his eye had been schooled to see something other than sites for beach-front condominiums, golf courses, and ice skating rinks?

     Bob Baffert, who grew up around horses in Arizona, looked at Triple Crown Winner, "Justify," and said he loved watching him run with his long strides. Abby Lee Miller's Broadway bound eye spots young girls with both dancing and expressive talents.

     In Vogue (June, 2018), Alexis Okeowo wrote how she grew up in the late 1990s watching Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Surya Bonaly on TV. Her conclusion: strong, beautiful, successful black athletes also could have style. Young women watching Serena Williams these days might have drawn the same conclusion, when they saw her attending the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

     Bethenny Frankel saw suffering from a hurricane in Puerto Rico and an earthquake in Guatemala and hired private planes to bring relief. Sometimes pictures of suffering are too painful to watch, especially if we don't have a place for an abandoned puppy or extra funds for a charity. In the Tony-winning musical, "A Band's Visit," Jewish settlers and a few Palestinian band members spend a chance meeting wistfully thinking about what could be. In contrast, Amnesty International's founders launched a creative campaign to write letters protesting human rights abuses. Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa founded the Solidarity labor union movement to overthrow Communism in Poland.

     On "The Golden Girls" TV series, master storyteller, Sophia, used to begin her tales by saying, "Picture this." Right away, she engaged more senses. A science teacher showed students a video of a firecracker to attract immediate attention. But the video also inspired students to question why the sparks were different colors and much more, all the questions she was going to ask.