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February 20, 2003

Tooting our own horn...

Today was quite the full day. Notre Dame sent about two dozen of its cast members from our December production of “Hamlet” to the University of La Verne Theater Festival to present the last 20 minutes of the show. It was our first time out of the gate, so to speak, so it wasn’t as if we had to live up to a traditional of winning or anything like that. Our newbie status notwithstanding, we left at the end of the day with two individual performance trophies (for our Hamlet and our Laertes). We were also a strong contender for the Best Overall Performance Award, I believe, but were beaten by a school that incorporated musical instrumentation, dancing, and singing into their scene. They’re apples and oranges at that point, I think, but the fact still remains that they had to go triple- or quadruple-threat to surpass us. In any event, the day at ULV was a good experience for the students. It showed them what other drama programs are putting out, and whetted their appetite for competition (which breeds improvement, unless it’s pursued neurotically).

On a completely different topic, I read an article in the local paper today about a high school sophomore who died in a fatal, utterly avoidable car crash, injuring two of his friends in the process. Below is the letter to the editor I rattled off shortly after reading the article:

“According to Greek myth, Icarus was a young man who was given the freedom of flight by the gift of wax wings which his father had fashioned for him. The wings melted when Icarus disregarded his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, and the boy fell into the ocean, drowning. In the February 19 Press-Enterprise story about deceased 16-year-old Matthew Neal Clark of Corona (“Student killed, 2 injured in car crash”), his Ford Mustang Cobra was described as “a limited-edition model for car enthusiasts,” a 390-horsepower vehicle that could cost nearly $40,000. It was travelling at about 100 miles an hour when it shot off the road and then flew the better part of a football field before landing. Icarus and Clark both were given too powerful a gift at too early an age. Expecting a sophomore in high school not to be seduced by that power—even one smart enough to be enrolled in North’s International Baccalaureate Program, as was Clark—is like asking a boy of similar age not to soar as high as possible when suddenly granted the freedom of flight.”

I don’t hold out any strong expectation that it will get published. Drawing comparisons between modern incidents and Greek myths isn’t exactly in vogue right now. Nor is the implication that the victim, no matter how inexperienced a driver and no matter how fiercely he will be mourned by his friends and family, seems to have cooked his own goose by going almost twice the speed limit on a surface street. We shall see...

Posted by patrick at February 20, 2003 12:50 AM

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