VT

Everybody else is chiming in, so I might as well, too, eh?

It was tragic. Yes. I've been consumed by the accounts of death and survival even as I feel strangely detached. Not sure why I do but, well, not all can be explained. I know earlier this year I was sickend by the shootings in the Amish township in Pennsylvania, so why not — as much, at least — by this tragedy of far greater magnitude?

Maybe I'm jaded by this type of slaughter happening almost daily around the world and going virtually ignored. Perhaps it just hasn't quite sunk in yet. Or is it that it's because I'm becoming more and more deeply entrenched as a journalist who has seen and heard unthinkable things? That seems to be the theory at Slate.com. Maybe they're on to something... In a strange way, I can relate.

In either case, my thoughts float across the Midwest to the foothills of Virginia where a tragedy has befallen a university with a student population not much larger than my town. I can't imagine what it would be like to have the same thing happen here...