You're cold?!

As one of the top ten most influential newspaper columnists in Effingham County, it is both my privilege and my responsibility to offer insight into important cultural events. As you know, few moments from last year moved more people more quickly than the December 18^th release of the seventh Star Wars installment, The Force Awakens.  With the assumption that you have already seen the film more than once, I will now proceed with my utterly biased and nerdy review. 

Overall, I liked it.  The Force Awakens was visually appealing and structurally sound.  The acting was pretty decent, which is not always the case with these movies, and the dialogue was often witty and fresh.  Granted, we will most likely never again find ourselves in the golden age of episodes 4-6, but this movie also avoided being a CGI cluttered mess that was often episodes 1-3.  This is a good movie you should go watch again, but it was not without its curious moments.

Primarily, we need to address the sad weirdness that was Han Solo’s life trajectory.  At the end of episode six, Han Solo was a general and a war hero.  He was the best friend to the galaxy’s last remaining Jedi knight and significant other to Old Republic royalty.  We all have our bad days, months, years, but the idea that he ends up a dead-beat space dad without his famous spaceship just seems a bit contrived.

Now, Luke I get.  It makes sense that Luke would try to start a Jedi academy and fail and then go into hiding.  Luke is a Skywalker and Skywalkers, statistically, are head cases.  They are prone to spastic bursts of simultaneous hubris and self-loathing.

Leia, too, ends up where we could predict.  She has always been a tireless vanguard of democracy and would most certainly end up a military leader in a resistance designed to fight for its survival.

But seriously, what happened to Han Solo?  I don’t get it.  Yes, his sacrificial death at the end of the movie does allow him to rejoin the pantheon of heroes, but it doesn’t make sense that he ever fell back out of grace in the first place.

Another point of contention I have with the film has to do with this very simple question:   why do the bad guys keep making giant laser cannons? The comically familiar ending to The Force Awakens reminds me of that old saying, “Blow up my giant laser cannon once, shame on you.  Blow it up twice, well, shame on me.  Blow it up three…wait a second…did we seriously just build another giant laser cannon?  Doesn’t anyone around here even read the news?  They’re going to fly a tiny fighter into this thing, I’ve seen it happen before, and we’re all going to die!  Can I at least get a transfer?”

I am perfectly content with the myriad similarities and homages throughout the entire seven-episode saga.  This is post-modern mythology, and mythology, by design, repeats itself.  In fact, what makes Star Wars so universally popular is not necessarily the originality of the story but the familiarity.  George Lucas combined archetypes and mythical elements from various cultures and threw them into space.  Thus, it’s not only OK that the third cycle begins with a force-saturated unknown with dubious lineage getting thrown into adventure, it’s actually quite comforting.  However, battling against yet another giant laser cannon seems too specific a plot device to take seriously a third time.             

This point actually leads us into the last caveat I have with the movie, and that is why can’t the good guys win?  All those victories, all those sacrifices, all those dead Ewoks, did they even matter?  Luke won.  He denied his baser impulse to give into the dark side.  He saved his father’s soul.  The mastermind behind all the chaos from all six movies, even the bad ones, was thrown into hell.  I know you have to have conflict to make a story, but isn’t the galaxy tired of war?  Besides that, who is supplying this First Order with weapons in the first place? Surely there are economic sanctions in place to limit the production of TIE fighter parts.

Thus, here is where the space mythology of Star Wars gets a little too real.  It seems that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, but not far enough away, every generation was cursed with its own military-industrial complex to fight.   As long as war, even star war, is profitable, there’s a good chance someone somewhere will be fighting somebody else.

The Builder

Today I want to talk about a builder.

Paul Schaub lived in the periphery of my childhood.  Unlike my own father, who wrestled us on the living room floor, and unlike other men, such as my grandfather who shot pool, or baseball coaches who smacked grounders, or Sunday school teachers who taught me how to pray, Paul Schaub’s presence was less tangible.

 For one thing, he rarely spoke.  Secondly, he often worked.  Our schedules rarely meshed, and although many hours were carved out during long summer afternoons with his two sons—creek walking, three-wheeling, hog showing—Paul himself remained mostly out of sight.  He stood along the edges of our days like the shadow of a tight fence. 

Despite this distance, though, it did not surprise me at all to stand a solid two hours in line recently at his funeral visitation.  After all, Paul came from a large family, and he married into one just as big.  However, most of us waiting were unrelated.  We were there to show respect for a man much beloved, and to offer sympathy to a family much bereaved.  Although deep into his sixties, Paul worked at a much younger man’s pace.  Unfortunately, the cancer, uncovered just this spring, moved one clip quicker.

This column ought not be hagiography, though, because Paul was hardly the type who would want people reading about him in a newspaper.  Besides that, some of you might not even know who Paul Schaub is in the first place. 

  Instead, this brief column will be about the things we build in this life before moving onto the next.

I want to talk about building today because it seems there’s too much talk about everything else.  I want to talk just a little bit about building, about things that do last past us, because it seems that lately I have been reminded that we, ourselves, will not.

Maybe it’s too much news, the sullen thought that perhaps we are all soft targets anytime we leave our home.  Maybe it is the palatable tension, the eerie din of a union that seems to fray a little less perfect every time we walk into another day.

Or, maybe it’s just me turning 40, and after years and years of paying attention to the world around me, the invisible fairy dust of immortality, each and every speck, has finally all drifted beneath my feet.

Because someday, it turns out, we will die.

That’s not really the point, though, is it?  That is not news. 

We often get bent out of shape about the “how” of dying. Will it be painful?  Expensive?  Slow?  Short?  But we often forget that in the end we all basically end the same way.  We do end. 

The difference between us, then, what actually matters, and what we should concern ourselves with, is not dying at all, but how we spend our time before dying arrives.  What do we build with our lives before those lives end?

Despite all the bad news, and there is plenty to choose from, I can’t help but be hopeful about America, because in America, I think, we actually have many builders. 

Paul Schaub built things.  Paul left behind a metal dragon that actually spits fire when you put a token in it.  You see it every time you drive past Vandalia on Interstate 70.  He left behind two good sons, hard working men with families of their own.  He left behind brothers and a sister, a daughter, grandchildren, and perhaps the most God-fearing wife I have ever known.

He built that family.  He built those relationships. He built a reputation that anyone who knew him would be proud to make their own.

Paul Schaub built much in his sixty-seven years, and for that many of us are quite thankful.

But now let’s talk about us.  What have we built so far?  Much, much more importantly, what can we build this year?