“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.
From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.
Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.
Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.
The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
If you have friends or loved ones at Virginia Tech, please, take the best of care, and let us know in the comments if there’s anything the rest of us can do. I hope it’s good news for you today.
Everyone else, look out for each other. Call your families; eat some cookies; anything happy, do it.
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends …
Hey. I don’t know what we do now either. I DO know that we’ll need each other going forward, as we always have, for support, mutual aid, and information on where to get high-quality wide-calf …
Thank you for this, lucky for me my friends are ok, but their friends may not be, as we really don’t know anything yet, it’s maddening really. Thank you though, knowing that people from other areas are aware of this tragedy and thinking about us here makes me feel a bit better.
Thanks, Sars, for the callout to those of us here in Virginia. It’s so staggeringly awful. Everyone is affected – you can’t throw a rock here without hitting someone who went to Tech/goes to Tech/has a kid or relative at Tech. Y’all just continue to keep those poor families in your thoughts, please.
It seems appropriate that this entry is listed as “uncategorized”. Events such as this defy understanding, and therefore categorization.
Thanks, and ditto to everyone else.
My cousin (my most babiest cousin – the youngest in my family, the sister I never had, my favorite and my maid of honor) is a junior at VT (a junior???? Damn I am old. my baby is 22. ACK!) but thank God, she was still in her apartment when the shootings started. So she stayed in for the lockdown. Don’t know yet if her friends & roommates are ok. :o(
It officially sucks a LOT. SO much. [/understatement] I’m really happy, obviously, that for my family it was good news. But I know a lot of other families got the worst news ever today, and I am feeling for them. I’m still kind of reacting myself. Our grandma died this fall, and we’re having her memorial this summer, and it just hit me – literally NOW – that we could’ve been having two funerals this summer.
If nobody minds, I have to go lie down. And maybe cry. And then bake cookies. And knit something. Then save some orphaned puppies.
Say a prayer or just send good vibes if you’re not the praying type.
Personally, I’m giving thanks. Huge ones. I might make a turkey and everything.
“The best of care”–I’ve read so much online today about caring for each other and yours is probably the sweetest. A really nice message. I could actually chuckle because I bought Newman’s Own Newman-O’s (cookies) for the first time today. (They’re fantastic.) Be strong, everyone!
Thank you, Sars.
Almost everyone I know here at my college (in Southern VA) knows somesbody at Tech. One of my roomie’s friend’s sister was one of the deceased. My other roomie’s brother goes there–we worried ourselves sick until we hear he was ok.
Right now, we are all Hokies and mourn together.
I went to college in SW Virginia, and the few people we still know at VA Tech/Blacksburg are ok. I just remember it as such a beautiful, peaceful place. While this incident is beyond imagination, I really can’t believe it happened in Blacksburg.
I’ve seen requests going around for people to wear the VT colors – orange and maroon. Which seems to me like a good idea.
Here in Charlottesville, too, everyone has friends, family, colleagues who work at Tech, attend or attended Tech, or have a strong Blacksburg connection. I learned about it when our babysitter arrived yesterday as I was out the door to go to my part time job. Our babysitter’s brother attends Tech; he skipped class yesterday but otherwise would have been in the building next to Norris Hall when the killings happened. We are all shaken, and I just keep wiping tears from my eyes thinking about the families of the victims, the students who survived and those who didn’t, and everyone in the Tech community.
Thank you to everyone across the U.S. and the world for keeping the families, friends, and everyone affected in your thoughts and prayers. I know there will be a lot of politicization of these events, finger-pointing about policy matters, and blame-shifting for who could have done what differently — we’re already seeing that, and it’s sickening to see some of the grandstanding that is already beginning. All that really should be happening now is a lot of grieving, and respecting the space and time that is needed to process the horror of what has happened. Peace, and take care of yourselves. If you and your loved ones are okay, I hope you savor life extra-appreciatively today. I know I am. And to everyone directly affected by this tragedy, we are all with you and holding your hands in spirit.
My husband is an alum, and we hung our VT flag out on our flagpole yesterday. Luckily, the people we know still on campus are fine, but everyone is shaken. It is a beautiful campus in the middle of a picture-perfect college town. Hard to believe something so awful could happen in such a pretty place. Then again, September 11th was a warm, sunny day. I guess tragedy is only accompanied by bad weather in the movies.
Sars, thanks so much for your kind words for all of us here in Virginia. Virginia has such a small-town feel to it (I have a friend who insists that VA is the second most underrated state, behind NJ)– it seems like everyone is only two degrees of separation away from someone at Tech. I’m not a Hokie myself, but I’ve been so proud of the ones who have given interviews. The media keep asking inflammatory questions, trying to elicit responses about anger towards the administration (which may or may not be deserved) or students too scared to ever return to school. The students are giving such classy responses, just reiterating their love for the community and their concern and heartbreak over the injured and deceased. This whole thing is just so awful and senseless, and it couldn’t have affected a more wonderful, peaceful community.
“The media keep asking inflammatory questions, trying to elicit responses about anger towards the administration (which may or may not be deserved) or students too scared to ever return to school.” That aspect of the coverage was pissing me off, at least on CNN — for example, all the questions (to student witnesses who maybe had bigger things on their minds) about shouldn’t the administration have locked down the campus. I don’t know if they should have or not, but the campus is larger, population-wise, than my entire home town. True, a university campus is a more cohesive unit than a town, but it’s still not a bio-dome, and I felt bad for the school officials who had to answer that question repeatedly. Like, no, they feel just *great* about how everything turned out, Paula Zahn. Wouldn’t change a thing! I mean, come fucking on.
I so agree with you, Sars and Smash. I mean, who has a disaster plan for this kind of event? I’m sure this is going to weigh heavily on the hearts of all of the administrators involved for the rest of their lives, even though they were trying to do what they thought was best at the time.
Sars, thank you for saying what you did…what a respectful, responsible callout. It’s horrific to think of college campuses as potential breeding grounds for violence, but I guess they’re as vulnerable as any other place; about 8 years ago, a mentor of my husband’s was shot dead on the campus of our alma mater. Now my husband is a college professor, and it gives me pause.
I know that everyone in our small college community here in NE will have their minds and hearts on VT today. If I owned anything orange, I’d wear it.
And of course the shooter would have to turn out to be a foreigner, so now we have something else to fuel racial hostilities. Couldn’t have been some fresh-faced lad from Nebraska, huh?
‘Like, no, they feel just *great* about how everything turned out, Paula Zahn. Wouldn’t change a thing! I mean, come fucking on.’
Dude, seriously! And the questions to the students were leading as all hell. I mean, the kids are understandably and hugely upset and they start asking, ‘shouldn’t the administration done more?’ etc. Just so they can get a quote that allows them to say, ‘the students were outraged at the lack of blah blah blah.’ Freaking jackals, the lot of them. It makes me hope that is something bad ever happens to someone they care about, someone is there asking them the same bullshit questions. ‘Your child was in a car accident. Should you have done anything differently to prevent that?’ Yeah, it’s super shocking that hindsight is 20/20, idiots.
Yeah, I just…don’t know if people understand what a lockdown would require. Not that I do either but that’s kind of my point. Could an email have gone out earlier? Yes, probably, but the priority at the time may have been not to panic people unduly, which I can understand, even if it didn’t work out. But trying to keep everyone on the campus indoors, and not moving around at all? *Thousands* of people? You can’t just slap that kind of perimeter together, and I’m not sure what good it would have done in this case anyway.
Wanting to blame someone, to have somewhere to go with the rage you feel, is understandable for those grieving the event, but when the media takes that particular angle, it feels crass.
Also weirding me out: the “alleged shooter was South Korean” headlines. As if that explains…anything. Just the phrasing, it’s weird to me.
Anyway, everyone hang in there.
Unfortunately for those of us who rely on the news media for information, this sort of thing doesn’t end with tragedies such as this. I lived in Baghdad for 15 months (June 2003 to Sept 2004), working with a humanitarian organization. From that coverage, you’d think they all hate us (which some of them do, but not all by any means). The truth of the matter is very different – but when a reporter sticks a mic in your face and asks you what’s wrong with your country, you’re probably not going to reply about how much it’s improved.
I wish I knew what we could do about coverage such as this. How can we tell them that we just want to know what the heck happened, we don’t care who’s responsible and how they would have acted differently if they had an accurate crystal ball!!? We don’t want to make this “Hokie-gate,” we just want to know if our friends are alive!
But in the end, scandal sells papers for far longer than tragedy alone.
i cannot handle this at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Librescu
I wish I believed in an afterlife so I could imagine him being rewarded for his sacrifice. no one that great should ever be taken.
Sending my love and good thoughts to all of you. I live on the west coast of Canada, but I have a friend who is a student advisor at VT. She was good friends with the RA who was killed. Another acquaintance knows of someone who is still in critical condition in the hospital.
This is unbelievable. I am keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers. I just wish there was something I could to do help.
We here at the University of Washington want to send our prayers out to the VT students, staff, faculty, and all their family members. We just had a fatal shooting on our campus here last week — also a relationship-violence-related case that ended in a murder-suicide that cost us a beloved staff member. So, we were all shocked to learn not only of the VT shooting this week, but of the fact the VT attacks may have been precipitated by relationship violence as well. Hang in there, Virginia Tech. We at the UW are thinking of you all here today. :(
Word about the media coverage. I went to college at Hollins, a small women’s college in Roanoke, and being without men we spent quite a bit of time over at VT on the weekends (two of my friends dated VT students for a while). It is a *huge* campus. I seriously doubt anything could have been done quickly enough. Of course, the media likes to forget that old saying about hidsight. ::eyeroll::
My dad called yesterday afternoon to make sure I didn’t still know any students on campus. He hardly ever calls me out of the blue like that. That speaks volumes to meet about how people feel about this.
My heart goes out to everyone at VT. I have fond memories of your school and you’re in my prayers.
“And of course the shooter would have to turn out to be a foreigner, so now we have something else to fuel racial hostilities. Couldn’t have been some fresh-faced lad from Nebraska, huh?”
“Also weirding me out: the “alleged shooter was South Korean” headlines. As if that explains…anything. Just the phrasing, it’s weird to me.”
Sars and JMR – I am also disturbed by the focus on the fact that the shooter is South Korean and a “foreigner.” The immediate reaction after finding out that the shooter was Asian was to go to the Homeland Security people and check his immigration status… he lived here for 14 years. He’s not a foreigner, except in paperwork. Maybe it hits me because I’ve been here for 22 years and I still don’t have my citizenship in order (have you been to the ICE offices? I can’t deal), but the focus on his otherness has just been really, really disturbing.
The South Korean government issued a statement this morning expressing condolences and a hope that the tragedy would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.” I’d like to hope that this was not necessary, but the media focus being what it is…
I couldn’t agree more, Sars. If someone were killed in my home, I wouldn’t expect them to shut down my whole town. I would expect police to look for the killer, which is what the cops in VA did. No one could predict that a person who shot two people would shoot 32 two hours later. After all, when the first plane hit on 9/11, most people thought it was a terrible accident. It’d be great it we could all see into the future, but we can’t and the people in Virginia did the best they could in a horrible situation.
I get that you have 24 hours of news to fill, but just because reporters don’t know anything about the person truly responsible doesn’t mean they should try to shift the blame just to have something to talk about. How about actually reporting news, not spewing your stream of consciousness musings?
My heart goes out to all those affected. It is all so sad and shocking.
Re: the media: The media coverage is terribly irritating to me too, for the reasons already stated. The media wants to act like there are plenty of people to blame, that this sort of thing can be prevented. But really, if someone has the firepower and wants to go out and kill as many people as possible, they can probably do it. And sure, that is scary, but it also a very rare event. There are many powerful reasons in our society for why this doesn’t happen that often. But of course, these events are shocking and only cause the media to re-present all the other school shootings as if this is a major risk. When it’s not.
Also, the characterization of the shooter as a “loner” makes me nervous, as it did with the shooters from Columbine. Let’s root out all those loners!
I live in Seattle too, and that shooting was horrible. I really resent the way some news outlets are trying to draw parallels between that tragedy and this one. About the only thing they have in common is a gun. The shooting at UW does seem to be worthy of investigating whether or not more action should have been taken by school officials (it sure looks like it) but that situation was very different from someone going on a rampage throughout an entire campus (as opposed to one specific target.) But some outlets are trying to make it seem like all campus administrations are hanging signs out saying “Weapons Welcome” and painting targets on students and employees. Ya know what, perhaps inflammatory, irresponsible journalism and huge loops in our laughable nation gun control policy have something to do with it, maybe?
“Let’s root out all those loners!” CNN’s focus on this aspect of it was nearly laughable; the anchor is all asking some psychologist, “So tell me…when it comes to these shootings, why is it always…THE LONERS?” …Really, dude? Seriously?
“I wish I believed in an afterlife so I could imagine him being rewarded for his sacrifice. no one that great should ever be taken.”
Why can’t the media make a bigger deal out of the heroes instead of looking for blame?
“Why can’t the media make a bigger deal out of the heroes instead of looking for blame?”
Seriously. I mean, look at Prof. Liviu Librescu, a 77 year old man who flung himself at a door to protect his classroom of students with no regard for his own safety. What an amazing, selfless man.
I am already sick and tired of hearing CNN anchors saying “why? why did this happen?”. Like there is ever going to be a satisfactory answer to that question for anyone who has been affected by this.
I wanted to thank everyone on this site for your honest emotions and for conducting a grown-up conversation about this tragedy. NY Times, MSNBC… So many people on so many comment blogs are missing the point, politicizing the situation, blah blah. Here it’s all hugs and tears. Yet another indication in a loooong string of lovely things to prove what a wonderful bunch makes up the TN community.
Thanks, Sars and everyone, for having such big and glowing hearts and sharing them here!
Crazy knows no color, no race, no religion. Remember Columbine? White guys, privileged suburban white guys.
Luckily, heroism knows no color either. That brave professor was a Holocaust survivor.
My heart goes out to those whose lives were touched by this insanity. Sending you strength & comfort.
I could not agree more with Randy’s Girl as well as all of the comments on the leading questions asked of the students by the media. To respond to an event such as this, grounded in misplaced anger and violence, with questions designed to create a sense of outrage and resentment…it stuns me. Yeah, let’s just give that cycle of ugliness and negativity another good turn. Me, I’m going to thank God for the good people out there, pray for the victims, hug my family, and look at pictures of the Hobe.
Also, re: “I am already sick and tired of hearing CNN anchors saying “why? why did this happen?”. Gee, CNN, your glamorization of this kind of shit with your sensationalizing coverage couldn’t be a part of the problem, being that it throws gasoline onto the “blaze of glory” that this sick kid wanted to go out in? It certainly isn’t the whole reason, but IMHO it also certainly doesn’t help. Again, let’s talk about the heroes, not the perpetrators.
The news outlets finally are doing something worthwhile and talking about the Holocaust survivor that saved his students as someone already mentioned above:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_mi_ea/virginia_tech_world_victims
From another Northerner, love and prayers from the land of slush. Our thoughts are with all the people touched by this tragedy.
And just to make it clear:
NOT heaping blame on South Koreans for this;
NOT heaping blame on loner college students for this;
NOT heaping blame on the administration for this;
NOT heaping blame on gun owners for this.
This was, as far as I know, one person. One pair of shoulders. One person’s choice. Nobody else gets the blame for his choice.
Many of you have already said what I wanted to say and better than I probably could have. I know nobody at the VT campus, am really in no way personally affected by yesterday’s terrible events, yet the grief is real and to be able to come here and share a measure of that pain with a caring community offers a relief for which I am eternally grateful. My heart goes out to the friends and family of those taken.
More names to include in your remembrances and prayers:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_victim_vignettes_2
I’m seeing all this coverage from the UK (I’m an expat), but unfortunately, the media coverage is pretty much the same. Leading questions, etc. And pointing out the ‘resident alien’ status of the shooter? Why on EARTH does it matter? Why do they always have to try to make it about something else?
Having just graduated last year from a small college in a small town in Maryland, this struck me hard. I tear up every time I see it on tv, and all the extra crap like the fact that the US gun lobby is saying some bullshit ‘well it would have been better if more students had guns,’ blah blah blah just doesn’t help anyone. I agree with everyone here. Stop using other peoples’ tragedies for your stupid political agendas and have some compassion for once.
I feel for everyone on that campus and everyone they know. It’s nice to know that, outside the media, people are showing so much love. And the story about that prof. jumping in front of the door breaks my heart. What a truly awesome guy.
Here’s a link to the memorial fund the university has set up:
fund.http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php
Actually, I definitely see parallels between what happened at the UW in Seattle and what happened at VT, Jennifer. Based on what I read this morning, part of what drove the VT killer to start shooting was relationship-related violence (maybe this has turned out not to be true, though? But I read this morning the killer’s first two victims were a woman he’d may have been stalking (another source called her an ex-girlfriend) and the RA who stepped in to try to break up their argument?).
Our victim at the UW was also a woman who was being stalked by her shooter, an ex-boyfriend. I think all of us here at the UW today (especially those of us who work right next door to Gould Hall where the shooting took place) are thinking roughly the same thing, which is: “My God, this could so easily have been us.” Our shooter killed himself right after shooting his primary victim, but he was in a school building where there were hundreds of people and lots of classes going on all around him. If he’d taken an extra ten minutes and just started shooting anybody he saw around him . . . Well, I can’t even imagine.
If nothing else, it’s made the VT tragedy all the more personal for us here at the UW, and our hearts go out for all VT students, staff, faculty, and family. Hang in there, everybody.
Hi, everyone. I’m in Central New York, so also in slush-land, sending love and best wishes to everyone affected by this tragedy.
I’m lucky enough not to know anyone who was a victim, but a friend of mine lost his best friend yesterday. It’s so vile, really. I don’t know what else to say. You’re all in my thoughts.
Sars, beautiful sentiment.
Just a quick reply to say, sending heartfelt love, prayers and good vibes from London, England. Nothing else to add.
To all of our sister schools in America,
We at the University of Windsor, Canada have you in our hearts and thoughts.
Safe Home.
Some fellow Hokie alumni and I started this project so we could concentrate on the good. It’s inspired by the PostSecret project. Please participate if you can and pass it on if you like.
http://weareallhokies.blogspot.com/
I have been avoiding the media coverage of this whole thing, as it tends to feel like the press has the proverbial “field day” with this sort of tragedy and that’s not something I want to watch.
I feel terrible for all of you who lost someone and thank you for drawing my attention to Mr. Librescu, I teared up reading his wikipedia entry. He survived so many potentially lethal situations in his life and was now able to save a classroom full of students. I’d say that’s a beautiful thing, if all of this weren’t so terribly sad.
I am a VT alumna (’98), and I wanted to say thanks to Sars for the kind posting and everyone for their thoughts and prayers for the VT community. I also appreciate the commentary on the media. It’s been hard enough to deal with the enormity of what’s happened in our safe little college town, but having the media already trying to assign blame at every turn is just salt in the wound. One of the victim’s parents stated that he thought the media should stop showing the footage of the shooter and focus more on the lives of those who were killed.
I found out this evening that one of my good friends from undergrad who stayed in Blacksburg to do post-graduate work was in first floor of Norris when the shootings took place. He’s a bit freaked out that the guy had to have walked right by his office to chain the front doors and is experiencing a bit of survivor’s guilt, but he also said that the support he and his fellow students has really helped them to cope.
I wanted to add a few links to some of the funds that have been set up for the victims’ families and other needs related to the tragedy. In addition to the Hokie Spirit Fund listed above (http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php), the United Way of the New River Valley has also established a fund for victims of the tragedy. Donations can be made to this fund at http://www.unitedwaynrv.org/Details.asp?ContentID=2137355581&TOCID=-1267001892. Also, the families of a number of the victims have either created memorial funds or requested donations to causes that were important to their family members. The university has posted some of this information at http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_services.php.