Jpatrickm

I’ve been wanting to write something about the completely devastating tragedy at Virginia Tech this week, but I honesly can’t figure out which train of thought to put into what sentence. It’s so completely senseless, random and sad. It’s not one of those events that we, as Americans, are separated from, like for instance a suicide bombing in a crowded city market. A bomb went off in Iraq this week and killed over 200 people. Those types of events happen almost daily in Iraq but we, at least I, have a hard time relating to the tragedy of them because they are so not our culture, so not what we’ve ever experienced and so not our way of life. They are equally tragic and devastating, but for some reason, I connect to the Virginia Tech events more. I hear about suicide bombings on the radio as I drive to work and I say… again, what else is new. But the Virginia Tech shootings… it stopped me in my tracks. I felt this overwhelming sympathy and sadness and loss. Maybe because I’m a college graduate and I went to a private military school and when I look at the pictures online and on the news I see myself and my friends in the faces of these young college kids. It’s just too close to home. I can’t begin to fathom what they must have gone through, sitting in those classrooms with their friends and then suddenly, chaotically, just systematically executed one by one without anyplace to escape to and without any action to take.

I’ve followed the coverage, mostly online. I’m somewhat of a news junkie and I found myself glued to the coverage this week. I realized, however, that my fascination was not so much with the details of the story as with how much more personal the news was and how it was being spread and communicated - websites, camera phones, Myspace and Facelink profiles, blogs, instant messages, text messages, emails. CNN couldn’t report things nearly as fast as the people who were there in it, live, online. There has been a lot written online about the use of these technology tools and how it changed the coverage of this event, but it is truely amazing… and heart wrenching. There are student blogs that were covering the event minute by minute with text, pictures and video. We have used the term Web 2.0 for a couple years now but I think we are now in the midst of News 2.0. Mainstream news agencies are racing to the scene and racing online, not to necessarily get the scoop on the story, but rather to get to the amature videographer or blogger who got the scoop on the story. The killer, with his video testimonial submitted to NBC, knew this best of all. It’s an amazing evolution of technology.

Well, all news and technology aside… I’m just so taken aback and saddened by this whole thing. My thoughts and prayers go out to the entire VT community and the friends and families of the victims.

One of the photos that caught my eye online was this one below. It was a coffee cup from au bon pain. It’s difficult to read but I think it says:

“If it had not been for this coffee cup I would have been in Norris 211. I can’t thank God enough for sparing my life, but I also will never understand why yours had to be [taken]” - it’s difficult to read the last word.