BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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CONCERT OF THE YEAR! TONIGHT, 8pm, BCC Theater. “BEATLESQUE with Special Guest Steve Holley.” A stunning full evening of BEATLES’ music, performed live note-for-note by the country’s pre-eminent Fab Four tribute band. BEATLESQE is led by Mick Valenti, formerly of QUARRY, QUICK FOX, and Woodstock fame. Steve Holley was Paul McCartney’s drummer in WINGS. He is now on a world tour with Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople).

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION JULY 21-3, 2017) — She was, we are told, an “aspiring model.” Why is it we never here, “She was an aspiring Rhodes Scholar” or “She was an aspiring molecular biologist?”

In truth, she looked like just another 19-year-old girl who wanted to achieve a social register by showing off her body. That’s the easy way in a time of twits and twitter. When you are 19, you don’t know what you don’t know. If you are a young girl not yet a woman, leaving one and not quite arrived at the other, you think playing the sex card is the ticket. This was the path chosen by Fredanzia Thompson of Navasota, TX, and she paid the price.

Thompson had good-looks. They were not, however, of the supermodel class. She was like that kid flash on the street corner basketball court, who eschews studies dreaming of the NBA and $20 million a year. Everything is hard to tell at 19, when the world opens before a young person full of infinite possibility.

Thompson decided her way up and out would be through the body. For an “aspiring model,” that means  fronting the camera. When scouting locations for photo shoots, photographers try to get something out of the ordinary. THE PLANET gets that. Dangerous and life threatening is certainly out of the ordinary, but is it advisable? Thompson found the answer recently when she posed on a set of railroad tracks.

They were not the tracks of a long-dead rail line, the kind where weeds grow and where forward looking citizens erect bike-and-hike paths and trails. Rather they were the heavily used lines of the Union Pacific-Texas. Rails gleaming with use, where trains run. Frequently. Big trains. The ones that can’t stop without a couple miles lead. Sure enough, train and girl proved the law of physics that two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time.

She died.

We are supposed to feel … what, exactly? Sorrow? Well, we are with Fr. Dunne, John that is, when he wrote that every death diminishes everyone else among the living. “Never send for whom the bell tolls,” as we recall. Sure, we are with that. Tragedy? Should we call this tragic? We suppose. This death was so unnecessary. And yet …

Actions have consequences. Effect follows from cause. Thompson did not die so much from being hit by a train than being caught in the act of invulnerability, a pose not unusual for 19 year olds. Her family grieves, and we stand respectfully, silently in their loss.

Nonetheless, at that age, a person needs to know better. THE PLANET preaches this to every young person playing with guns, injecting needles into their arms, playing “chicken” with their most precious gift. They need to make better choices or accept the consequences. We cannot mourn the unwanton workings of peril.

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“Let me ask you a question.” — Tony Soprano

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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