Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

I've been ignoring much of the 'news' the past couple days; not all of it, just specific parts.

For example, I just observed the following headling on my e-mail ISP home page: Va. Tech Awarding Degrees to Victims (AP). Good. Good on Va. Tech; commemorate those who died. Do it well. I understand there's going to be a lot of flak over this whole situation and there should be.

I'm very deliberately not paying any attention to news about one specific individual. It's part and parcel of something I worked out following a similar situation here locally, from nearly 17 years ago. It's a small thing, I know, and I believe it harkens back to something my Father taught me.

"I can relate to a man," Dad said. "I can't relate to a 'race', or a 'gender'. Those are things, not people." He was talking to me about the race-related riots in Detroit in '67. That's where I grew up, mostly, thereabouts. I suppose his lesson might seem specific then, but I find it to be a foundation for a number of things.

I can't change a 'society'. I can change how I do things, and set examples, and hope that that might impact the greater body of people, the 'thing' called 'society.' And so I choose to remember the victims of such events as those at Virginia Tech. They did not ask for this; they are worthy of remembering. Whatever other outcomes come to be from examination of events, it is a good thing that the people who run Va. Tech do, announced in that headline. It honors the victims.