Safe!

I've enjoyed the recent blog discussions, news coverage and now the Tacomic of the moment by RR Anderson about the mysterious safe that was found upside down and deserted in the middle of a Tacoma street. Imaginations ran wild. Who's was it? Where'd it come from? How'd it get there? And most of all ... what could be in it? Well, most of the questions have been answered, including now what's in it: chunks of wood. (Though now I'm wondering, why?)

I gotta say, it was much more fun when we didn't know. I think we all knew that probably nothing of any great mystery was inside, but it was so fun to ponder the could be's and what if's.

Which is kind of what I like about the local blog community ... especially writings found in the comments and forums sections of Exit133, but also several others you can find through feedtacoma. Lots of dreaming. Lots of pondering. And while we like answers, we're not always looking for reality checks.

We're putting our thoughts and dreams out there. Little seeds. We nurture them with discussion. Then we wait to see which ones germinate, grow, and eventually bear fruit. Sometimes we weed out a few. Sometimes one with great potential gets eaten by a deer. But with tender loving care we nurture our thoughts, our ideas, our dreams, our desires for what we see Tacoma's future to be.

With that said. With future in mind, with safes declared boring, and with RR Anderson's awesome reference (misspelled or not) to Neko Case in mind, I now paste the lyrics to alt-country-indie-what-not-one-time-Tacoman phenom Neko Case's Thrice All-American here ... they're worth a read. And the song's worth a listen.

Song: Thrice All-American
Album: Furnace Room Lullaby, 2000
Artist: Neko Case

I want to tell you about my hometown
It's a dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound
Well the factories churn and the timber's all cut down
And life goes by slow in Tacoma

People they laugh when they hear you're from my town
They say it's a sour and used up old place
I defended its honor, shrugged off the put downs
You know that you're poor, from Tacoma

Buildings are empty like ghettos or ghost-towns
It gives me a chill to think what was inside
I can't seem to fathom the dark of my history
I invented my own in Tacoma

There was nothing to put me in love with the good life
I'm in league with the the gangs and the guns and the crime
There was no hollow promise that life would reward you
There was nowhere to hide in Tacoma

People who built it they loved it like I do
There was hope in the trainyard of something inspired
Once was I on it, but it's been painted shut
I found passion for life in Tacoma

Well I don't make it home much, I sadly neglect you
But that's how you like it away from the world
God bless California, make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don't find you Tacoma