Condolences

To all of those who lost someone on the Virginia Tech campus today.

It's been almost eight years to the day since the Columbine murders, but the horror and outrage that event brought on seem to be missing from people today. Why?

Columbine had a standoff, something happening live for TV. Tech holds only a report of events and press conferences for the 24-hour channels.

Columbine was high school. Compulsory. Tech, a state school that only recently shifted its focus from agriculture, is a college. Not mandatory, and somewhat exclusive.

Columbine had Dylan and Eric. We still don't know the Tech shooter's name.

I'm sure that in the coming days, police camera work will somehow surface, revealing the gory details of today's slaughter, and at least one or two eyewitness accounts will serve as tomorrow's headlines, but in the age of video-on-demand-I-wanna-see-it-as-it-happens, today's events are ringing somewhat hollow in the national conscience.

Go thou, deceased, to this earth which is a mother, and spacious and kind. May her touch be soft like that of wool, or a young woman, and may she protect thee from the depths of destruction. Rise above him, O Earth, do not press painfully on him, give him good things, give him consolation, as a mother covers her child with her cloth, cover thou him. - Vedic Funeral Rite