Life Lessons

I was always fascinated by warfare. I learned a lot about war from life. Life Magazine to be exact. The American Civil War had become a passion of mine, and in January of 1961 Life Magazine began a six part series on that subject.
Up until then my exposure to the conflict had been limited to what I could glean from Highlights For Children and My Weekly Reader, a few movies and the fanciful tales shown on Walt Disney.
But here between the pages of our weekly Life Magazine was the Civil War shown in magnificent period paintings and the stark black and white photos of Matthew Brady and his contemporaries. Articles about the battles and the generals and incidents I had never heard of.
I was hooked. Not only about the Civil War, but also about the world in general. Life Magazine would come to our home every week, with its wonderful photographs and fascinating stories about the human condition and the history of the planet, past and present. I was and still am an information junkie, and Life Magazine showed me the world with all its flaws and all of its wonders.
Life would teach me about the shame of racism. I wouldn't understand it all yet, but the pictures told me of violence and hatred in our country, in the land where we were all supposed to be free. Life Magazine would help me to see things as they really were, and more and more questions would form in my mind.
I would read about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and their quest to break the hallowed home run record of Babe Ruth. It would set me off to read about the great legends of baseball, and spark another passion in my life.
Life also helped to spread the false hope of surviving a nuclear holocaust. I remember stories about building fall-out shelters, and how to stock them with enough food and water and how to filter the air so you would be safe from all the radiation, so Life also taught me not to believe everything I read. I also didn't notice that most of the covers of Life Magazine showed a predominantly white world; it left the stories of the other peoples relegated to the inside. I guess America wasn't quite ready for diversity yet.
Life was my first exposure to the erotic as well. The alluring photos of Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe, the cover with Yvette Mimieux in a bikini, Sophia Loren and all the great beautiful women of the world in glorious color for young boys to admire.
The communists were there as well. Castro would grace the cover many times over, and the troubles in Berlin and the tensions between India and China.
I could sail to outer space with the astronauts or go on safari in Africa. I was on the baseball diamond with the New York Yankees and standing guard at Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin. I could go all around the globe and under the sea and into the minds of the people of the world every week as I lay on the living room floor lost in the pages of a magazine.
Lost in the world of Life.