Changing the World

When my good friend Eric at whataworld convinced me to start a blog, the conversation went something like this:

Eric - "You should start a blog."
ckoz - "OK."

I'm very impressionable and easily convinced to do things that I probably shouldn't consider, like climbing that 100-foot crane in Madison after attending a Brewers double-header on nickel-beer day. Or blogging.

I've always been a tortured writer, one who needs to express his thoughts just so and will re-formulate sentences and paragraphs a myriad times before settling on a final product. This stream-of-consciousness thing is painful.

However, I must admit that a mere 3 days into this endeavor, Eric was right.

This morning, while scanning the AP wire, I came across this story:

Granada, Colo. (AP) - Six migrant workers apparently leaving jobs on a farm were killed when a freight train collided with a sport utility vehicle driven by a 15 year-old boy near the Kansas state line, authorities said.

This is, of course, a tragic story. And the fact that the boy was driving an SUV is utterly irrelevant. Nonetheless, this AP writer, Melissa Trujillo, acknowledged that a human being actually took the steps to ignite the vehicle and propel it forward -- the SUV did not act alone.

More importantly, she mentioned it in the story's first paragraph.

Would this have happened four days ago? Or did Ms. Trujillo stumble upon this little blog and subsequently take a small step toward instilling a modicum of reason into her organization?

As they say in the Tootsie Pop commercial, "The world may never know..."