Barr on Blacksburg

The Virginia Tech massacre was the subject of three of my previous posts, the first entitled Yom Hashoah, the second under the heading of The Bell Tolls For Us, and the third, in response to the NBC airing of the killer's video was Guns and Cameras.

Several other media ecologists have also chimed in, including Keith Massie on his myspace blog, and Bob Blechman in an opinion piece published online in Blogcritics Magazine, under the title of Spiritual Laryngitis.

But I especially want to call attention to the letter to Locus Online, written by my friend, the feminist science fiction literary critic Marleen Barr. Locus magazine is devoted to science fiction, and Marleen's letter, really more of an essay, connects to slain member of the SF community James Bishop, and to Liviu Librescu, the Holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life to save his students (they were the subjects of my first two posts). But what makes Marleen's soul-searching commentary especially noteworthy is the fact that she taught in the English Department of Virginia Tech for 14 years! Her letter ends with a message of love and forgiveness, and I want to add to that, God bless you, Marleen.