The Aerie

Joe Sodd III

Our neighbor's son was murdered yesterday.

He died a few miles away, in a quiet neighborhood wedged in between the freeway and a couple of colleges, while riding his moped home from giving a dance performance. Joe Sodd III was minding his own business when someone, for reasons unknown, decided to stab him to death.

I didn't know Joe Sodd III terribly well (grandson of the Minnesota PGA Hall of Fame player). When he worked as a waiter at a local restaurant, he had served my wife and I dinner. But as the Star Tribune points out, he was a gifted young man with lots to offer the world.

I cannot fathom his parent's grief, nor do I wish to try. Just thinking about it makes my head spin. The Star Tribune did a service by posting a video that shows some of this young man's accomplishments. There are any number of web tributes to Joe by his peers, which show how many people cared about him, and how much he will be missed.

The Sodd's have lived down the block from us for the seventeen years that we've lived in this house, and it is my deep regret that I did not get to know their son better. He was a student at Marcy Holmes school, and the photo above is eight years old now, with Joe in the center, from a production of 'Bye By e Birdie.'

There will be a memorial for Joe on Sunday at the Triple Rock Social Club which is very close to where he was killed.

Addendum and poster

Apparently I was too quick to post, yesterday. It took til this morning, but KSTP has posted the article along with the video of the crazy St. Francis councilman which caught my attention while flipping channels. So now you can watch and judge for yourself, although as I mentioned in a discussion with my friend Tim, you CAN count on the media to edit the interview in order to get 100% pure uncut China White craziness.

Still, it doesn't appear that it took a lot of editing.

Also, rebounding from my crushing defeat on a technicality in Bruce Schneier's Third Annual Movie Plot contest (Pfft! "150 words or less"... it's a guideline!) my caption for the Bruce Schneier motivational poster has received wide acclaim. So that motivational poster is available by clicking on the thumbnail at left...

And WHY am I focusing my life on entering various contests on the Bruce Schneier blog? Because it's about the only blog I can actually justify reading while I'm at work!

Well, that, and I have no life.

Whatsa Mater With St. Francis?

St. Francis is my alma mater, I graduated from St. Francis high school, back in 19-mumble-mumble. At the time, St. Francis was a desolate little farm town, which thought nothing of investing in extra athletic facilities, but skimped on the educational funds. Call me biased, but when I grew up there, I thought I was surrounded by thugs and hicks and knuckle-draggers.

I expressed this opinion in response to a story on the Star Tribune website, garnering a response from a friend of mine who has lived up there for the last couple of decades, assuring me that things have changed for the better.

But some things never change.

Happy Alberti Day!

Hey y'all. I wanted to blog this yesterday, but I was too busy partying? Why?

Because yesterday was "Alberti Day"!

Yes, it's carved in stone somewhere, so it MUST be true.

Alberti Day was named on behalf of the first Italian settler on Long Island. To put things in perspective, when this guy stepped off the boat, Columbus' discovery of America was not as old as the Civil War is to us now.

Along those lines, my friend Giovanna has clued me into the fact that if you can trace your ancestry back to Italy, you can become an Italian citizen! And since my father's father was from Palermo, I have the opportunity to undertake the multi-year quest to gain Italian citizenship.

This is no small thing! WIth such citizenship, I could get work in the European Union, and also I could own property in Italy. Here comes my Tuscan retirement villa! Gio has offered to help me out with this quest, with the caveat that she's moving to England in the fall in order to become an archaelologist.