Doing what you've always wanted to do

May 13, 2004

Dear Patty,

Our niece, Danica, graduated from college last weekend in Kansas City surrounded by 20 members of her family and a new boyfriend on leave from the war in Iraq. She already has a job as a dental hygienist lined up in Kansas City and soon will start paying her own bills. Life gets real fast.

Danica wasn't yet a teenager when DC and I got reacquainted one July night and married two months later. But she was old enough to notice how quickly life can change.

I got to see her grow from a little girl into a lovely young woman. Her younger sisters are pretty, too. The middle one, Devon, might be more competitive than Donald Trump. She agonizes when she doesn't know the answer to a crossword puzzle clue. Her internship next semester at Disney World is intended to help her make good contacts.

Darci, the youngest, is doted on by everyone. She's a theater major who has both light and dark sides that should serve her well on the stage.

To DC, Danica's graduation felt more like a funeral. Danica's passage is one for DC as well. One by one, these nieces she lived with for a time and baby-sat are going out into the world. There is trepidation, maybe especially because in the past few years the world has greatly developed its capacity to frighten.

Will they get hurt? Will they find meaning in their lives?

The map of possibilites has no boundaries on graduation day. Maybe that was the source of DC's melancholy -- thinking about her own potentials as yet unexplored.

The 50s confront you. You could live another 50 years but know the time left to do what you've always wanted to do is limited.

Some people buy a convertible, some trade in their spouse for a newer model, some do something they've always wanted to do. That last one probably works out best.

On our way to Kansas City, we stopped in Columbia and attended a screening of mostly silent films. It was sponsored by a group of people who operate the Ragtag Cinemacafe. They show films commercial theaters don't, titles like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which is a documentary about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the unsuccessful attempt to depose him, and "Live Nude Girls Unite!," a movie about an attempt to unionize strippers. Sometimes they show commercial films, like "Requiem for a Dream," that appeared and vanished from the mall theaters in a blink.

Upcoming next week is "Stupidity," called "an epic investigation of the long and glorious history of human stupidity."

Members of the Ragtag Film Society take their motto from Bertolt Brecht, who among other things said "A theater without beer is just a museum." They believe in serving food with their movies, too.

One of the silent films was "Pass the Gravy," a funny movie about dining on a prize-winning chicken. A live band called The People's Republic of Klezmerica accompanied the movie on-stage. The creative quirkiness reminded me of Arcata, DC of Berkeley.

One of her dreams is to operate a theater that shows art films. Something similar to Ragtag would never work in conservative Cape Girardeau, everyone knows. She acknowledges that conventional wisdom. But I've seen that gleam in her eye before.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is the managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.