I can't sleep again, so I thought I would come here and hammer out a few thoughts while my brain decided if it had sleep on order tonight yet or not. I could take something, but it's 0420 as I type this. I don't need to sleep all day tomorrow.

Patricia and I were talking earlier, and she asked me if I had a time machine where I would like to visit. That brings forth some interesting thought, because there are several people I would love to have a face to face with. I would love to see Jimi Hendrix play Woodstock, or visit with Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine sitting at the back of the room at Appomattox Courthouse, or sharing a cold drink with Dr. Martin Luther King? What would you like to do, or see?

I had reason to visit Atlanta, Georgia recently. When did the Omni Hotel become part of CNN? I believe there is a huge coliseum attached to them as well. When did all this happen? I remember the Omni as it was in about 1976, a huge towering thing with glass elevators and an open interior. It was beautiful, and a major business person's meeting place, which is why I was there with my father. The complex was in the news recently due to the shooting that occurred there.

Speaking of shootings, the Virginia Tech Massacre has the entire reeling in some fashion or another. Whether it be about gun rights or mental health, it seems this Korean kid opened up more kitchen table politics than did Don Imus!
First my heart goes out to the victims and their families who will be still trying to recover and heal from all this long after it is no longer newsworthy. It's sad. It is very sad. Thirty three people are dead senselessly tonight, to include Seung Hui Cho.
the common denominator in all, each and every one of these school shootings, is bullying by peers. Granted, in some cases this bullying is perceived to be more serious than it may really be. In actuality, that is not for us to say, and we will in the Virginia Tech case, may never know.
I personally experienced severe bullying and teasing during grade school. It can be, and is, very traumatic. For most of my life I have been overweight to some degree or another, and was a very easy target for ruthless kids to relentlessly tease me. I was, and am still, dyslexic, and in the early seventies they had another name for Dyslexia, and that was stupid. Reading aloud in class was an over rational fear I suffered from each and every day in school. Just because I read different than most, I would become nervous, and often skip words or loose my place while reading aloud. The other kids would openly laugh at me. I was different, and if you attended the public school system , and that my friends, is a death sentence. That's the way you saw it anyway.
While all this was going on, I was experiencing child abuse at home, so if anyone, anywhere could use childhood as an excuse, well, I think I would qualify.
So was Cho justified in his attack? No. Not just no, but hell no. Now ask me if Cho felt his attack was justified, and I will tell you yes, his only regret was that he couldn't take more with him. Please understand that what I understand about him is his mindset, and the root cause of most of his anger. Remove his schizophrenia and replace it with depression, then you would have.... me.
That then leaves us with several things to think about. Do we have teachers and counselors in our schools that see and respond to these kinds of bullying? I hazzard to guess that if confronted with a frontal assault, i.e., it happening in FRONT of them in FRONT of a board member or a parent, they would respond. However, if you were ever subject to any of these kinds of assaults in school you already know they never happen in front of adults, and never in a fashion so as to lead guilt toward the subjects responsible for this behavior.
I sucked it up and actually went to a teacher after a severe session of bullying. I was told to get some backbone and stand up for myself and leave (that teacher) alone. The incident occurred during P.E. and involved 17 students. How can teachers expect a kid to stand up to those odds?
Our system is broken, and it is broken in many different ways. We failed all 33 students in so many ways. Teachers and counselors need special training to spot these problems before they grow into cases of emotional terror. We as a people, as a society, need to say that enough is enough and start talking about this. No more jokes, because its not funny anymore!
Look at the videos they all make. It's all the same message, "We aren't going to take it anymore!" It's the very same message I wanted to scream aloud at the age of eleven to my tormentors. How many of you lie awake at night fearful of going to school the next day? How many of you faked sickness because you didn't want to run that gauntlet of fists as you walked to the back of the bus amid all the laughter to take the only remaining seat? Am I the only one?
From what I have read, Cho refused to answer even if his name was called, even at a college level. It has been said that he refused to participate in class, that he wore dark glasses to class and made his instructors and other students fearful. With all respect, had I chosen not to participate in class, wore dark glasses or any of the negative things Cho is accused of, the Department Dean would have given me a single second chance, and then, I'd be gone. A professor has the pen, and it is mightier than the sword. A simple, "...and is disrupting the class." should have put him out on his ear, but no.
It seems that from all of this strange behavior he would have at the least subjected himself attention from campus police, whom would then be watching him like a dirty kid in a candy store.
So people then jump forward and rush to blame the firearm, or the seller of the firearm. This in turn opens up the bleeding wound that is the gun rights argument. Look, nobody, myself included, is saying that Cho should have been able to purchase the Glock model 19, or the Walther 22. I am a life member of the NRA, however, the mentally ill should not have access to firearms, legally, or illegally. A judge signed a document stating that Cho had been diagnosed by medical doctors as schizophrenic, referring him to a hospital for further treatment. That treatment, the state of Virginia says, is a private matter between Patient and doctor, and that the state has no reason to be privy of the outcome of that treatment, or if it ever occurred if it was of a volunteer nature! Well Jesus, Joseph and Mary, what ARE they smoking up there? I say that because that thinking is simply full of flaws and wreaks of disaster!
We have become a society afraid of labels. Perhaps the time has come that we must realize that there are certain labels that we simply cannot afford to turn a blind eye to and cinch up our collective belts about the collaboration of different departments within the state having communication with one another.
It seems so simple, the second that the judge signed off on Cho's "mentally ill" papers after stalking two females, that the circuit clerk should have immediately filed a writ to the department of corrections and NCIC notifying them of a change of status in this (Cho) subject. Had that been done, NCIC would have hammered Cho's request for a firearm license and notified state, county, city and campus police of said request.
I believe in personal rights, but at what costs? I am forced to ask myself if I would feel comfortable with Cho's rights being questioned, and my answer keeps coming back the same every time I ask, because 33 wasted lives lost say it is.
I run a trucking company, and own many trucks. I listen to those truck engines, and a few over the years I have known so well that I could tell by the sound it made that something was wrong. Think about that.
I do preventive maintenance on all those trucks. If I didn't, I would miss some minor thing happening to an engine or axle that will cause a catastrophic failure within weeks . It costs a little over $200 to service a truck. It costs $17,000 to rebuild an engine because a $150 injector tip broke off and slammed into the turbo, destroying the engine. To me it's a no-brainer.
Could it be that 33 kids are dead because someone wasn't doing preventive maintenance? Could it be that nobody was listening to the sound of the engine? Is it too far fetched to think that maybe, just maybe, a teacher could have recognized at least that there was a problem with Cho and his emotions and tried to talk to him about it? Maybe find out if something was bothering him? Is it too far fetched to imagine that the Virginia Tech shooting could have stopped years ago?

Is it?

Currently listening :
Bob Seger - Greatest Hits
By Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
Release date: By 25 October, 1994