Planning Poorly

FOR A VERY LONG TIME, lovers have attached their padlocks of love to the lovelock bridge in Paris, a grand French tradition, and over the years the sheer weight of the locks on the bridge has become, as you might suppose, a danger to the future of the bridge itself. So, the inevitable has happened, and the locks are being removed, and future attachments presumably forbidden. Couples who placed locks there decades ago are expressing the profoundest sadness and disappointment. Some are angry. But, again....wasn't this development inevitable? Weren't all the lock leavers of the past merely contributing to, indeed hastening, the inevitable removal of all locks, one way or another? Surely. Meanwhile, on the University of Arkansas campus, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S. of A., everyone who graduates gets his or her name engraved into the sidewalk, a tradition which began in 1871. The sidewalk, containing thousands of names over the decades, winds all over campus. Every year more people graduate. In 1871 only about seven graduates had their names chiseled in. In 1872, a coupla more. Every year, more names....currently, they are way behind on the sidewalk names. something like ten or fifteen years behind, at least. They always have been behind, but doggedly and determinedly they keep chasing the elusive dream, keep paving and chiseling toward the recent past, towards the recent graduates. I remember in 1971, when I was 16, my father remarking that eventually the U. of Arkansas sidewalk of graduates will have to be pointed towards Oklahoma, and just allowed to head in that direction. Maybe it'll eventually reach the pacific ocean. You can see the lawsuits now.