Sigh.

For those who have been kind enough to e-mail and inquire, my family was not near the I35 bridge collapse yesterday.  Thank you for your thoughts and concern.

The area is a stone's throw from the U of M law school and a route I used for commuting for many years.  The commuter's cityscape view of Minneapolis into the city from the north is, in my opinion, one of the loveliest around.  The bridge is not the eerily long kind that fosters fear in the bridge-phobic simply by crossing it.  Instead, it's the kind of roadway you sit on in rush hour, stewing about your day, planning your dinner, oblivious. 

While I've been proud of the response of the local authorities, I have been, as usual, disappointed in the media machine's desperate and dramatic attempts to tally up the dead faster than their competitors.  Even the blogging world rushes in to cast blame, while mothers and daughters and sisters, fathers and sons and brothers are still pulling the bodies of their loved ones out from underneath steel beams and concrete.   

In secondary world news, I'm pretty sure we have several Diegos that were apparently painted with lead paint. 

I suppose it's not yet possible to simply surround my children in a giant bubble of safety?