It can, and does, happen here, too.

Virginia Tech. Thirty-three dead. I fell asleep last night imagining the grief that 33 families are experiencing right now. My friend Ed informed me today that a Quebec woman was among the victims, she had been teaching French in the modern languages department for the past 10 or so years. An event far away touches so close to home...; and yet someone else in a blog comment said that it is no more tragic than all the lives lost in Iraq on both sides. Why even compare? Someone else in a different blog comment made reference to the “right to bear arms” clause of the US constitution and how that ought to be changed in light of all the recent deaths by handguns, and someone else countered that that was the only thing that Bush had done right, not changing that clause. I just don’t get it.

In the bath today I had a brilliant topic for writing an entry on. It disappeared and has refused to surface again. I hate when that happens. I so very much do not want this diary to turn into a litany of my daily activities, and yet I fear that is what it becomes when I can think of nothing interesting to write about.

In writing group tonight the Virginia Tech tragedy somehow infiltrated my work. We sat around afterwards talking about it, four middleaged women, three with university-age kids, two who actually work in a university. There were resonances of the Dawson College shooting in the fall. Even with gun control in Canada, it still happens here.

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