Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Off-Topic: I'm from DeKalb
When I first started this blog almost 5 years ago, it was strictly a friends and family thing. If it was still a friends and family thing I wouldn't be writing this, because everybody reading it would already know everything I'm about to say. But now I've made the virtual acquaintance of people around the world and most of you know that I live in Virginia. I'm a transplant here though. I grew up in a small town about 10 miles from DeKalb, the scene of today's horrible shootings. I lived in Sycamore and DeKalb in the early 80s.
I'm just stunned by the killings at NIU. Last spring at Blacksburg, many of the students who died were from northern Virginia where I live now. Some of our friends' and neighbors' kids went to school there. When I first heard about that event, I was distressed and saddened, but not totally surprised. Living in the DC suburbs has somewhat numbed me to violence, although not on that scale. I considered writing something here at the time of that tragedy and decided against it.
But DeKalb, that's different. My family lives there. We know people who work at the university - everybody knows somebody who works there or attends school there. We know people who work at the hospital. We know people in law enforcement. We know paramedics. I hope we don't know any of the victims.
I felt relieved when I didn't know any of the victims at Blacksburg and that's the wrong sentiment, of course. It's always a loss to somebody whenever anybody dies, and I'm mindful of this passage now as I was then:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.
John Donne, Meditation 17
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