LETTERS: SAM BLACKWELL'S COLUMN FOCUSES ON POSSIBILITIES

To the editor:

Once again, Sam Blackwell has captured resonant slices of life in his Jan. 4 column, transforming them into a warmly personal musing that total strangers (and some friends) can sit beside and muse along with.

Many of us, as Sam rightly observes, are "hanging in there" here in our inland Cape, brooding upon a renaissance that could never spring fully formed and spontaneous just because some people think it's a good idea. Groundswell support for anything takes time and nurturing, and, like the slowly but visibly forming Emerson Memorial Bridge, independent yet parallel programs are pushing forth all over the community.

Main Street USA (via Old Town Cape), the Downtown Merchants Association, the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, the university's developing River Campus School of Visual and Performing Arts and a number of other committed organizations are all welcome social and cultural projects that have as a common denominator the good of our riverside community.

It remains extraordinary to me how much sheer artistic, cultural and community talent we have in our region.

Coordination among these programs seems imminent and, in fact, is going on quietly as those of us who sense this renaissance-on-the-verge hold true to the ideals and romanticism and hope that Blackwell speaks of.

MARK STRAUSS

Cape Girardeau