Musing's musings

Forward, together forward

It was two years ago today that a troubled young man (and an alumnus of NIU) named Steven Kazmierczak walked into a lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University and opened fire on those gathered there, killing five students and wounding sixteen others, before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Before I go on, let's pause for a moment to remember those whose lives were cut short untimely on that sad, cold day:

• Daniel Parmenter, age 20
• Catalina Garcia, age 20
• Ryanne Mace, age 19
• Sgt. Julianna Gehant, age 32
• Gayle Dubowski, age 20

αἴλινον, αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ δ' εὖ νικάτω

We're not even four complete months in to 2008 and already I'm ready either to start all over again or else skip to the end of this crappy year in the hopes that something better lies at the end of it than anything I've encountered thus far at the starting end.

Tragedy struck the NIU community again today, when the glassblower for the chemistry department (where I worked for twelve years before starting my current job) was killed, and his wife seriously injured, in an accident on their way to work this morning. She had to be airlifted to the regional trauma center in Rockford and undergo major surgery, but is expected to survive. He, on the other hand, was in such bad shape that they didn't dare try to airlift him out. He was due to retire in another couple of months, and was so looking forward to building his retirement home in Wisconsin, and enjoying the fishing on his property in the Ozarks. I literally spoke to him yesterday morning, when he told me how hard he was finding it to get motivated to come in to work in the mornings, knowing that his time was short and retirement was beckoning. Now he won't get the chance to enjoy any of that.

We've had two bomb scares in as many weeks, and there's all the usual end-of-semester stress to contend with as well. Small wonder many of us are wandering around in a quasi-daze, wishing the world would stop moving quite so erratically so we could figure out the pattern, account for it, and get back to doing whatever it was we were doing before all this mess got started.

The news in the wider world isn't much better. Food riots and shortages around the world, the dollar plunging to all-time lows against major world currencies, the price of oil and the price of gold are at or near record highs, and the world seems well and truly hellbound in a handbasket. The Democratic presidential candidates are engaging in an inter-gender pissing match, neither one willing to compromise with the other. Meanwhile, John McSame is consolidating his base and pulling even with both Democratic contenders in recent national polling. There was apparently some kerfuffle last week about the latest in the seemingly endless series of presidential "debates" between Obama and not-quite-Obama--as if such events hadn't been little more than televised campaign advertisements for lo! these many years.

Speaking personally, I couldn't possibly care less about what Clinton said about Obama, or what Obama said about Clinton, or about who either one of them is friends with. All I want is for one or the other of them to get the nod, and then to get on with the business of beating the pants off of McSame: preferably out of my sight and/or hearing, since voting for either Clinton or Obama will require a huge amount of nose-holding and gnashing of teeth on my part, and voting for McSame is absolutely not an option. I'm sick to death of hearing endless repetitions of the same horse-race stories where the only thing that changes is who happens to be ahead at any given moment. I'm also sick to death of the presidential campaign season, which has been dragging on for the last two years at least: clearly, we need to move in the direction of the European model, where candidates have weeks, rather than months or years, to make their case to the voters.

Fortunately for my sanity (and quite possibly for my health as well), by this time next week I'll be ensconced in the deep silence of a secluded monastery, making a four-day retreat. I'll be away from the phone, away from the computer, away from the radio, away from all the political and other bullshit. Just me, a lot of silence, a lot of seclusion, and plenty of time for prayer and thought and reflection. Maybe, please God, that will get my batteries enough of a charge back that I can make it through the rest of the year without going completely 'round the bend.

Oh, yeah. The post title. It's a line from an early chorus in Aeschylus's Agamemnon. It translates to "Sorrow, sing sorrow; but let the good prevail." That's going to be one of my prayer mantras next week, I think.

Боже мой, Боже мой, Боже мой

I am beginning to feel distinctly less insulated from the messy world that we here in this formerly sleepy town used to think of as "out there." Barely two months after a young man shot up a campus lecture, killing five and wounding many more before taking his own life, a year and a day after another young man shot up the Virginia Tech campus, killing 32 and wounding dozens more, now NIU campus police are investigating a bomb threat at the university health center building.

What in hell is this world coming to?

The intangible bond between two broken hearts

The post title isn't an exact quote (because it would've been damn hard taking notes while trying to hold a lit candle (and, more importantly, given the windy conditions this evening, keeping it lit) from the remarks of NIU President John G. Peters at tonight's candlelight vigil at Northern Illinois University to honor the memory of the Hokies who lost their lives a year ago today. But they're a close approximation: I know he used both phrases in his speech, though I can't swear that they were that closely connected. Nevertheless, it's a good description for the relationship that will forevermore exist between our two campuses, our two communities.

We're both members of a club that nobody wants to join--and would to God that NIU and Virginia Tech were the last two ever given the opportunity to join it. We speak each other's language: a language that neither of us was looking to learn, and one that both of us would rather we hadn't had the opportunity to learn at all. But we have learned it, and having learnt it, we cannot--and should not--forget it.

The image is the design of the T-shirts that were handed out to the first 900 people who came to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commons. I'm happy to report that there weren't any shirts left that I could see, meaning we had at least that many people at the event.

Among them, God love them both, were two Virginia Tech students. They gave up the opportunity to be with their compatriots in Blacksburg at their own vigil today so they could come and support us--even as we tried to show our support for them and their fellow Hokies. Their presence is just the latest in a long line of expressions of support that Virginia Tech and its campus community have offered to us in the wake of our own tragedy two months ago--support for which we are eternally and profoundly grateful, and which we can never truly repay. Somehow, though, I don't think my Hokie brethren and sistren will mind.

Tonight's vigil was a concrete and physical reminder of a spiritual reality that my faith tradition has taught for centuries: that we are all one body, one family--and our destiny is to help one another along the road we each must travel from cradle to grave. Yes, Virginia, you are your brother's keeper--as I am yours. Or, as Jesus told his disciples in Matthew's Gospel:

Ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ καὶ πάντες οἱ ἄγγελοι μετ' αὐτοῦ, τότε καθίσει ἐπὶ θρόνου δόξης αὐτοῦ· καὶ συναχθήσονται ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ ἀφορίσει αὐτοὺς ἀπ' ἀλλήλων, ὥσπερ ὁ ποιμὴν ἀφορίζει τὰ πρόβατα ἀπὸ τῶν ἐρίφων, καὶ στήσει τὰ μὲν πρόβατα ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ ἐρίφια ἐξ εὐωνύμων. τότε ἐρεῖ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῖς ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ· δεῦτε οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ πατρός μου, κληρονομήσατε τὴν ἡτοιμασμένην ὑμῖν βασιλείαν ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου. ἐπείνασα γὰρ καὶ ἐδώκατέ μοι φαγεῖν, ἐδίψησα καὶ ἐποτίσατέ με, ξένος ἤμην καὶ συνηγάγετέ με, γυμνὸς καὶ περιεβάλετέ με, ἠσθένησα καὶ ἐπεσκέψασθέ με, ἐν φυλακῇ ἤμην καὶ ἤλθατε πρός με. τότε ἀποκριθήσονται αὐτῷ οἱ δίκαιοι λέγοντες· κύριε, πότε σε εἴδομεν πεινῶντα καὶ ἐθρέψαμεν, ἢ διψῶντα καὶ ἐποτίσαμεν; πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ξένον καὶ συνηγάγομεν, ἢ γυμνὸν καὶ περιεβάλομεν; πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ἀσθενοῦντα ἢ ἐν φυλακῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν πρός σε; καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ' ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.

Whenever the Son of Man may come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon the throne of his glory: and all the nations will be gathered together in his presence, and he shall divide them one from another just as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep upon his right hand, and the goats upon his left. Then will the Ruler say to those upon his right: "Come here, you who are blessed of my Father; inherit the realm that was prepared for you before the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; thirsty, and you gave me to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked, and you clothed me. I was ill and you looked after me, in prison, and you came to me."

Then the just will reply to him, saying: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?"

And the Ruler will say to them in answer, "Amen I tell you, as often as you did it for one of these the least of my brothers or my sisters, you did it for me."

--Matthew 25:31-40, my translation from the original Greek

The campus community of Virginia Tech has lived out that Gospel pericope. Tonight's vigil was one small downpayment on NIU's attempt to do so. It will not be the last, I'm sure. Nor should it be.

This isn't how it's supposed to work

Something else I spotted in that issue of Science the other day perked me up a little. It was a news item about a graduate student in the NIU Geology Department who was wounded in the shootings on February 14. Despite having been shot five times, Brian Karpes, 27, not only survived, but managed to get his poster presentation completed in time for last month's Lunar and Planetary Science conference in Texas. Regrettably, Karpes's injuries prevented him from going to the conference and presenting his poster in person, but an NIU professor made sure it got to the conference. And, as Nature reported on its blog, dozens of colleagues stopped by to sign the poster and express well-wishes to Karpes. A note tacked to the middle of the poster quipped, with understandable pride, "He gets shot FIVE times and he still turns in his homework!!"

Not bad for a graduate student, getting noticed in the two most prestigious journals in science. What a pity that it wasn't solely on the basis of his results--but still, it's a great story and one of many little rays of light and hope that have begun to shine from the darkness surrounding our brush with tragedy earlier this year.

Coming to terms with the "new normal"

So here we are, nearly at the end of the first week back in full swing. So far, things seem to be going well. Or well enough, anyway. It's definitely good to have the students back on campus, to see (and hear) people walking around, driving, chatting as they pass to and fro in the halls. It was about a week ago, I think, that I walked out of my building on my way to a meeting and heard...absolutely nothing. Not a single sound--no cars, no footsteps, not even a distant hum of machinery. And that was freaky.

The media has gone away, most of the counselors are on their way back to their homes and regular routines, God love them all, the police and security guards have more or less dropped out of sight (though I've no doubt they're still around), and everyone is doing his or her level best to pick up the pieces of the routines that we all dropped hastily two weeks ago.

People continue to be wonderful. The students and faculty at Virginia Tech have begun to send us cards expressing their condolences and offering their support. Members of the DeKalb and Sycamore communities donated something like 20,000 cookies to welcome the students back to campus this past Monday and Tuesday, and many volunteered to come and pass them out in person. We have a whole team of "crisis dogs" on campus, whose job it is to stand or sit or lie someplace and let people pet them and say admiring things about them--and it was wonderful to get the chance to do so.

I'm on a campus-wide search committee this term, and we were in the process of interviewing a candidate when the shootings took place--not a hundred yards from Cole Hall, and nothing between the candidate and the members of the campus community who were at that particular forum but a pane of plate glass and a slight hill. That candidate came back to campus and finished the remaining part of the interview yesterday. All the other candidates we invited either rescheduled their interviews or agreed to come when we contacted them. It did feel a little strange, though, to see both of the candidates we've interviewed so far wearing the cardinal-and-black ribbons that have become the latest fashion accessory on campus. I'm not sure why it felt strange to me--perhaps because they aren't quite members of our university community yet--but it did.

And, of course, the governor came back to campus yesterday, to announce that he was going to ask the state legislature for $40 million to demolish Cole Hall and to construct a bigger, better edifice somewhere else. For once, I find myself in agreement with the editorial board of the student newspaper, who opined today that with Blagojevich, talk is cheap. I'm waiting until I actually see the money before I take that as a done deal. I concur with the university president, the governor, and the editorial board that demolishing Cole Hall is the right decision--I'm just not as sanguine as the governor is that he's going to be able to pry that amount of money out of the legislature when we're already nearly a billion dollars in the hole for the next fiscal year. Not to mention the fact that as long as he's finally interested in giving us some money, it would be wonderful if he'd ante up for our lengthy--and ever-growing--list of capital needs that have been going begging for want of funding, in some cases for a decade and more.

It's too early to tell just how the campus as a whole is going to respond to this situation. Right now, the standard greeting is still "How are you doing?" and people do seem to be going the extra mile to be friendly and supportive. Will that continue as part of the "new normal," or is that attitude going to fade away as the semester wears on and the stresses of exams and job hunting and the like start to kick in? Are we going to be able to keep up the sense of comity and community that has been in evidence the last two weeks, or will that give way to the more usual wrangling over resources, fighting over privilege, sniping, and innuendo?

The signs are generally positive right now--but the shock is just now starting to wear off, and people are starting to get back in the usual groove again. Check back in a month and we'll have a better idea.

NIU one week later: It is what it is

A week. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes.

Let me tell you, an awful lot of those minutes have seemed a lot longer than usual. And some of them, far shorter.

What have we learned in those minutes? Not an awful lot, when it comes to understanding this thing that has happened, and the reasons why it happened, and why it happened here. We may never get those answers, no matter how desperately we want to have them.

For me personally, what I've learned is the real meaning of the phrase I used in the title of this post: "It is what it is." It's the most rational and appropriate answer I've been able to come up with this past week to so many of the questions that keep coming into my head, or that people keep asking me.

There's been a lot of talk about "getting back to normal" on campus. Sometimes it's been about "getting used to the 'new normal.'" I'm sure I'm not the only one in the NIU community that thinks the "new normal" really, truly sucks rocks. Many of us would dearly love to be able to go back to the world as it was on February 13, 2008--when things were normal as we used to define "normal," and we felt safe and we didn't have an army of media watching our every move and a band of rage-filled hate-mongers dogging our days and haunting our nights. But we can't go back to that time. It is what it is. This is the "new normal," and whether we like it or not, it's what we've got--and all the pretending otherwise in the world isn't going to make it go away.

Not sure how this suit fits yet

It was ...different... going in to work this morning. I ran into a fellow parishioner this morning as I was grabbing coffee and bagels on the way to work. The standard greeting around NIU these days is no longer "Hi," but some variation on "How are you doing?" When she asked me that question in the bagel shop, I looked at my watch and said, "I'll know in about 10 minutes," that being roughly the amount of time it was going to take me to drive to campus, park my car, and walk to my office.

On the one hand, it was good to be back in familiar surroundings and doing familiar things. Though I'm grateful for being given some time off to think and pray and reflect and grieve, by the end of the day yesterday I was chomping at the bit a little. I wanted to be doing something again, not just sitting at home and thinking. Not that I don't have plenty to think about--I do. But I wanted to be doing something in and around that thinking.

Still, I wasn't sure--and many of the colleagues I spoke with today expressed similar feelings--what it was going to feel like when I stepped back on campus in the daylight, during working hours, on a regular workday, after leaving it under such stressful and confusing circumstances last Thursday. The metaphor I used to describe how I was feeling to one of the colleagues who inquired was that it felt like trying on a new suit--though now that I think about it, maybe the better metaphor is trying on an old suit that has been altered for the first time. You know you like the cut and the material, but you're still not sure how it's going to hang on you or move with you--it may need to be shortened here, let out there.

We're going to be working on our usual jobs this week, but more importantly, most of the faculty and staff (anybody who has front-line responsibilities for working with students) will be going to informational workshops on what to expect and how to respond when the students come back next week. And that was adding a little weirdness to what was already a weird day. I literally had no idea what I was going to do today when I walked into the office, beyond an 11 o'clock staff meeting.

My prayer for NIU

Gentle God of all compassion, we call to You:

Welcome into the Blessed Presence the souls of those who died untimely this past Thursday afternoon:

• Dan Parmenter, 20
• Catalina Garcia, 20
• Ryanne Mace, 19
• Julianna Gehant, 32
• Gayle Dubowski, 20

Bind up the wounds--physical, mental, and spiritual--of those still in hospitals or recovering at home, of those affected by this tragedy, those mourning their losses, and those who responded so bravely and without regard to their own personal safety.

Do You be gentle as well with the soul of Stephen Kazmierczak, who turned his own violence against himself after unleashing it upon others and forever changing our previously quiet and complacent community.

Bring us back, O God, to that campus. It can never be the same again: let us instead make it better than it was. Let not our own darkness conquer us and tempt us to retaliate with vengeance or with hatred; rather, do You bind up all our scattered leaves again into one book, one campus, one community, stronger and more dedicated to the ideals it was founded to promote. Help us to cast out our fears and to live love for neighbor and enemy alike, to renounce hatred and any desire for revenge. Teach us to embrace one another in our sufferings, and to wipe the tears from each other's eyes, lest we allow this one single act of violent madness to define us forevermore.

Loving Healer of our every ill, I give thanks to You and to the thousands of people, known and unknown, who have reached out to this community and its members in this, our time of trouble, and offered condolences, support, prayers, money, food, and whatever else was needed. For we were hungry, and they fed us. We were thirsty, and they gave us to drink. We felt naked and lost and alone, and they clothed us and cared for us and showed us to places of safety. We were sick and they ministered to us, grieving, and they consoled us. Let it be credited to them, O Just Judge, as righteousness.

Grant to all of us Your peace, that peace which passes all understanding, a peace that the world cannot give. Plant that peace deep within our hearts, and let it find there fertile soil, so that it wells up within us and spills out from us as a balm upon this troubled world.

And let the people say, "Amen."

Merci

It's been a wild three days, but we're still coasting along--though some in the community have got to be running on fumes by now. I'm worried about my pastor (and told him as much after Mass this morning), and even more so about the university's president. President Peters looks like he's put on about 10 years in the last three days. As I said to one of my colleagues not long ago, I hope someone is slipping him sedatives or otherwise taking measures to make sure he gets some rest--and also that he gets to take a long vacation on a sunny deserted island somewhere when this is over. He's earned his salary 10 times over this week, that's for sure.

It's far too soon to say that life at NIU or in the area of small communities and farms that surrounds it has gotten back to normal. I'm not sure we're ever going to get back to what we used to regard as "normal." I happened to hear a siren this morning as I was walking out of church, and my first thought was "I never want to hear that sound again as long as I live." As I was filling in as a Eucharistic minister this morning, one of the local police officers who responded to the call on Thursday came up in my line, and I had to fight down the urge to lay a big hug on him and say "Thank you for what you did." Not that it wouldn't be appropriate to do that, but it would have been difficult with a chalice full of consecrated wine in one hand.

But we are moving in the general direction of normality. Faculty and staff have been told to report back to work this Tuesday. We'll get a week's worth of preparation before the students come back next Sunday, for classes to resume the following day. That will be the real test--and that's why faculty and staff are getting workshopped on how to handle things, and why the university is bringing in an army of counselors for the first few days when students are back full-time. We're still providing on-site counseling for those students who have remained on campus, and for faculty and staff members who need it for themselves, naturally.

I want to express my thanks for all of my readers who have left comments or sent e-mails to ask how I'm doing or to express their thoughts and well-wishes in this time of trouble. They really do help, and they are deeply appreciated. If you want to make a more substantive contribution, I'll have some links at the end of this post, and will be adding them shortly to the "In memoriam" list in the left-hand column. The outpouring of support for NIU and the members of the NIU family that we have received from around the area, the state, the nation, and the world has been truly overwhelming. Msgr. Nelson mentioned in his homily this morning that people had sent something like 80 pizzas to the Newman Center on Friday--and that every one of them got eaten. People have been sending food of all kinds, flowers, making ribbons and signs and buttons, setting up memorial funds, and all of that is wonderful. But so are the quiet words of support, the warm hand rested on the shoulder, the solicitous inquiries, the hugs, the prayers, good vibes, and well-wishes. In the words of the old saying, every little bit helps. And in some ways, the little things actually mean more. It's great that there are memorial funds and scholarship funds in the works, and that the Student Association is planning a physical memorial of some kind. But those are more impersonal than a word of consolation, a note or an e-mail, a thought or a prayer directed at or on behalf of a specific person.