This week's tragedy brought an unvisited Drexel-specific problem to mind. It is obvious that the Virginia Tech community was already close-knit before the Monday shootings. We've heard countless stories about powerful relationships that exist between affected students and professors.
Colleagues: She would be in the third week of her third term at Drexel. A newly-minted communications major, she was a student in my fall section of COM 111 (Fundamentals of Communication). Her first paper for the class was excellent; in it she eloquently described the communication styles she observed in her large, sometimes frantic Italian family.
Virginia Tech's campus will forever echo with the horrifying memories of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Those 32 students and faculty will never get the chance to tell their families that they love them. Never again will they smile or be able to hold their loved ones.
There are numerous topics I tire of hearing on a constant basis. Global warming and the death of polar bears would be one. The "Bush lied, people died" meme would be another. But since I'm a U.S. boy and an architectural engineer, what really irks me are the barrage of reminders that parts of New Orleans still lay in ruins as remnants of a Hurricane Katrina landfall.
I saw a remarkable sight the other day: eighteen death row exonerees, clutching a banner and battling the wind in front on Independence Mall, celebrating their reprieve from hell. One after another, they recounted the days and nights there: "Seventeen years, eight months, and one day," said Juan Melendez.
On April 14, after visiting the Golden Pavillion in Kyoto, my wife Lynn and I got lucky and noticed a road sign indicating the presence nearby of a Kyoto Museum for World Peace. We were surprised and immediately intrigued. Our tour guide, and our Lonely Planet Tour Book were both blank on the subject, so that night after dinner I Googled the place (www.
On 29 August, 1967 in the town of Cussac, France, two children were tending cows in a field. Little did they know they would return home that day crying not "wolf" but "space monsters," and everyone in their world would believe them. According to François Delpeuch, 13 at the time, he was keeping his family's cows from leaving their grazing area with his sister Anne-Marie.
