[Oe List ...] {Spam?} Blacksburg/Baghdad

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

Thanks Marhsall,
It may have been a rant, but it was a good rant!
Charles
--- "W. J." <synergi at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This is a rant.
> 
> One week after the massacre at Virginia Tech, I¢m
> still feeling oddly 
> unsettled and still angry. 
> 
> Blacksburg was a happy place to visit when I was
> growing up. My uncle 
> made violins and taught Physics at Tech, and my aunt
> would pass out 
> wooden recorders so we could play orchestra with my
> violin-playing 
> cousins upstairs in their big old house. We¢d break
> up laughing at the 
> missed notes. What a wonderful gang of relatives! I
> miss them, 
> especially those to whom we¢ve had to say a final
> good-bye. And I miss 
> the sense of uncomplicated fun we shared and the
> unquestioned safety 
> of our insularity, with the Korean War a long way
> off.
> 
> I can tell you that Blacksburg is remote. Still
> remote, despite the influx of 
> a huge, diverse student population going for that
> prized Tech degree. A 
> long way from the World Trade Center and the
> Pentagon and Baghdad, 
> where the Pentagon will pay your one-way ticket and
> ship you back in a 
> box. Uncle Sam wants you if you can¢t get into
> Virginia Tech.
> 
> And there are thousands of Blacksburgs and millions
> of classrooms 
> where our kids and their kids still go to school in
> unquestioned safety 
> and insularity. With wooden doors and old-fashioned
> doorknobs, and 
> without automatic electronic lockdown systems and
> Kevlar vests. In our 
> hearts this is still Mayberry, and if there are any
> cops around they¢re 
> more like Andy Griffith than Clint Eastwood. 
> 
> But the universe has changed. And I¢ve grown up
> emotionally as well as 
> physically. But I¢m not happy with the outcomes.
> 
> And I can tell you that this Mr. Cho who bought the
> guns and pulled the 
> trigger and shot 175 rounds into defenseless kids is
> not the last shooter. 
> Not the single exception to our safe universe by any
> stretch of our 
> collective imagination.
> 
> This Mr. Cho was inside the system. He was one of
> us. He had 
> unrestricted access to our nation¢s unsecured
> classrooms. He easily 
> evaded our lax state gun control laws and federal
> laws prohibiting sale 
> of lethal weapons to those who¢ve been adjudged a
> danger to 
> themselves or to others.
> 
> So we had it coming. And unfortunately there may be
> thousands of Mr. 
> Cho¢s within the system who can get access to the
> weapons. Maybe we 
> could see it coming, or at least now we can see it
> coming again.
> 
> I¢m just numb over Baghdad. So numbed that getting
> today¢s kill figures 
> on the news won¢t make much cumulative difference.
> But Blacksburg? 
> That¢s US, baby. Way more all of us than all of them
> over there.
> 
> So what do we do now for all the good people of all
> the Blacksburgs 
> who aren¢t ready for the next one? I mean the
> students, the English 
> professors, the campus cops, the deans of students,
> the mental health 
> counselors, the hapless college presidents? Not to
> mention the relatives 
> of those who get mowed down? And not to mention the
> thousands of Mr. 
> Cho¢s and their incredulous or oblivious roommates
> and classmates? 
> What do we do now?
> 
> I¢m thinking: tighter gun control laws, more serious
> and highly trained 
> law enforcement, greater sensitivity and much
> greater competence 
> across all education personnel, a dramatically
> increased budget and 
> scope of practice for mental health professionals,
> and a new balance 
> between the protecion of confidentiality and
> mandated followthrough/
> aftercare for all risk-identified people in the
> system. And, for the Mr. 
> Cho¢s of this world who¢ve been repeatedly
> red-flagged, mandated 
> counseling as a condition of progressing to
> graduation for as long as 
> they¢re in the system. 
> 
> But that, my friends, would take a lot of green. So
> far we¢ve been 
> building our Blacksburgs on the cheap. With
> old-fashioned doorknobs.
> 
> --Wayne Marshall Jones
> Wayne Marshall Jones lives in San Francisco where he
> ponders the future and gives thanks for all who gave
> us this moment. His journey with EI/ICA/O:E beganin
> 1958, when at age 18 he was first impacted by the
> Christian Faith and Life Community of Austin, TX.>
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