e-mail me at billdeg@umich.edu

4/17/2007

unspeakable

Blogs may not be the best arena for trying to articulate the horrors that unfolded in Virginia yesterday. Still I feel compelled to say something. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to lose a loved one in such a senseless and violent and monumentally hurtful way. I can't even imagine being part of the Virginia Tech community this morning, processing the theft-destruction of 33 lives.

Perhaps because I don't have kids of my own and have devoted my life to academe, even just the thought of mass tragedies involving college students makes me wince. I saw several times the trailer for We Are Marshall--the film about the plane crash that killed the football team from West Virginia--and each time thought to myself, no way do I want to sit through such a film and inevitably imagine being a professor and facing such trauma.

I pray that those in Blacksburg can find strength in community and begin to feel some sense of peace and security despite the violence and chaos that's been visited upon them.

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