Don't call me Ismail.
My friend Robert Bratton went to Virginia Tech as an undergraduate. An english major at an engineering school. This was before coming to the University of Maryland for his Masters of Library Science. And before moving on to George Washington University to catalog books for their Law Library. Everything I know about Virgina Tech, I know from him. Especially from the day he pulled the schools web site up on his computer because he wanted to show me what a real university looked like, not Maryland's flood of red bricked pseudo-Georgian columned pretention. But a natural school set in the majestic backdrop of the Blue Ridge mountains. Of course he's from Roanoke, and I am the last person that would speak against aesthetic determinism. About the murders I can say nothing. I have nothing that gets me close to this
Gunman was both methodical and angry - Los Angeles Times. Boing Boing has some commentary up on possible meaning in the phrase Ismail Ax written on the shooters arm
VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax? UPDATED. But looking for reasons now, will get no one very far. It is apparent that people knew - knew after a fashion - that this person was a troubled individual. But that no one listened to see how troubled or lead him out of it or to help. America is a busy nation of busy people and we do not make time for those who can not keep up. We do not attempt to know them or even count them. A rear guard of unknown proportions.
I look over the news today and see a gun debate is forming in the wake of this tragedy
Shock, Sympathy And Denunciation Of U.S. Gun Laws - washingtonpost.com. By 2:00 pm yesterday I saw links forming in Google News that laid this at the feet of laws that kept concealed weapons off the Virginia Tech Campus
The Virginia Tech shootings and gun policy. - By John T. Casteen IV - Slate Magazine . Maybe, but the greatest human motivator perhaps is boredom and after so many ordinary days of no assailants, a symbolic assailant, oppressor of the mind, will suggest itself and a new tragedy will be born.
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