Thoughts

I was originally going to blog about theatre ettiquette, and how even if it's summer stock and free and outdoors (like, say, you go sit in the back rows at The Muny or you go to the Shakespeare in the Park festival here in the StL), you should still behave as though it were real professional theatre because-guess what?-it IS real professional theatre. So don't get up and leave right as Joseph is reunited with his father and brothers, because there's a whole other song or two afterwards and even though you may think that they can't see you leaving, the actors certainly can see you leaving, and they can also hear you leaving. And those of us who are good patrons have trouble seeing around you as you stumble down the row in front of us.

As you can see, I still got the rant in, albeit the abridged version. No, I have decided to scrap the lengthy tirade in order to share some thoughts.

To my friends, family and readers in Minnesota: I am glad to have already heard from so many of you, and I hope to hear from the rest of you soon. Let me know you're okay. For the rest of you, I want you to know that I do have ties in the Twin Cities area, and I've heard from the majority of them, and as they're all either related to each other or very close friends, I am not too worried about those I have not heard from yet.

Think of how many bridges you drive over a day. I myself have driven over the 1-35W bridge many times. I have friends whom I am sure drive over it at least once a week if not every day.

This is the kind of thing that could scare some people away from bridges. Like 9/11 scared people from flying or going into tall buildings. But that kind of fear could paralyze you...especially because sometimes the only way to get where you need to go is to cross a bridge.

Life is full of risks, and there are some that we just can't avoid. The idea is to minimize the risks while maximizing their benefits; taking the I-35W bridge over the river is a lot quicker than heading north of the river's source and coming down the other side.

My thoughts are with everybody affected by this tragedy. In perspective, it could have been much much worse I am sure, but then so could a lot of things have been that shouldn't have been as bad as they were. And this is one of them, but there's nothing can be done about it now except to find out what went wrong so it can be prevented from happening to somebody else, somewhere else. Because we have to remember that to somebody else somwhere else, you and I are somebody else.

It seems trite to ask for suggestions for my Free Write Friday in light of this tragedy, but we must forage on. So, look back to last week's Free Write Friday and then I pose you this question as your jumping off point for your suggestions for starting point for this week's Free Write Friday. Let me read that last sentence to make sure it makes sense. No, it doesn't good. Okay, here's the question:

What happens to Sam to keep him from showing up to his meeting on time?

And GO!