Well, here is my first blog. I hope to add something valuable to the public discussion of the issues of these times by applying the lessons of history to the challenges of today. Don’t expect anything new here but I will share my attempt to improve my mind with you.

Yesterday, as I drove my car I turned on the radio to find the breaking story that the interstate bridge over the Mississippi had collapsed killing or injuring many people. When the commentator explained that this bridge crossed the Mississippi at the campus of the University of Minnesota, I remembered the bridge, and not in a fond way.

About ten years ago, I visited the University of Minnesota for three days of conferences. The campus is on both sides of the river. On the first day I went for a walk that eventually let to a pathway that went along the river and under two bridges. I can remember turning to the left and seeing the two bridges for the first time. The first bridge in view was wonderful. It has multiple steel arches and crosses high over the river from bank to bank carrying a local street. It dates from before the great depression when important civic works like a Mississippi river bridge were expected not just to be strong, but to look strong and it does. Bridging the West of the continent to the East of the continent is important and this old bridge says to all who gaze upon it “I was important to the people who built me.”

Unfortunately, just up river from the old bridge was a modern interstate highway bridge. This “new” bridge was all business. Six lanes crossed the river on a bridge that looked more like an overpass than an important structure. I instantly hated the new bridge. Its casualness was demeaning to the great Mississippi. It was cheap and ugly and unworthy of its neighbor.

Some people believe that the most beautiful man-made objects are those where form and function come together. Think of the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, yesterday form and function once again came together when that ugly man made affront to beauty fulfilled its destiny and made its victims pay the ultimate toll.