Questions of the Week

• Why do I run?  I run because I can, I run so I feel alive, I run for the challenge of pushing myself to achieve something new but mostly I run for fun.
• Why don't we round up the well-to-do Americans who illegally employ the undocumented workers?  They are the real major criminals in our society.
• Why do I keep making promises that I can't keep?
• Why did I go to college at UCSC (University of California, Santa Cruz)?  At the time I had choices of UC San Diego, San Diego State University, UC Davis, UCLA, UC Berkeley, San Jose State... My five years at UC Santa Cruz really opened my eyes and got me to think for myself.  It changed my life.  
• Is it a small world?  In 1990, the year after I graduated from college, I got a job at Portland Stage Company in Maine as a sound technician/ assistant electrician. One day as I was crossing the street to go to work, I saw Cinnamon (yeah that's her real name, forgot her last name) coming towards me in the opposite direction. She and I had worked together on our senior project at UCSC where we just graduated a few months back. She directed one of the shows that I did all the sound designs for.  Santa Cruz was 3000 miles across the country on the other coast, the chance of seeing someone you know was phenomenal, I thought. OK, next summer, I got a gig at a Summer Theater Festival in Wisconsin.  Dennis, my former co-worker at Portland Stage was living in Madison, about 30 minutes from where I was working so I came to visit and picked up something from him.  As I walking down State Street going towards University of Wisconsin campus I saw another person I knew from Santa Cruz walking on the other side of the street.  I knew I wasn't mistaken because I've seen this guy many times previously at UCSC.  I've never actually talked to him or knew his name, I've seen him at some concerts on campus, around the dorms, coffeeshops, library, bus stops, downtown Pacific Garden Mall, etc. He was one of those characters that stands out in a crowd, he had this trademark long black unkempt hair, wearing Goth jewelry with a Hippie demeanor/swagger and black Doc Martens leather boots or something like that.  Wore black most of the time.  I knew that it was the same guy.  Just like I was sure that it was Cinnamon back in Portland.  Now I don't remember seeing anybody else I know in Baltimore, where I went to work afterwards, but the next job I was hired in Dallas, Texas where the Production Manager was Ben, one of my classmates in the technical theater department at UCSC.  He went on to Yale School of Drama to get his Masters. Ben is now the Technical Director at The Old Globe Theater in San Diego, California, which is my hometown.  I am now in the Atlanta area, where I've been for the last 15 years, and so far this is the longest I've lived in one place and I have yet to see another person from UC Santa Cruz.  May be one of these day when I'm least expecting it.  That's the way it always happened.