What needs to be said

Thank you…

…to the police, first responders, and EMTs on-site, and the trauma staff at Montgomery Regional, NRV, Lewis-Gale, and Roanoke Memorial. Fast, courageous and skilled work saved lives.

…to the administration, for handling an unforeseeable tragedy with immense dignity, and the resumption and close of the semester and academic year with sympathy and integrity.

…to Nikki Giovanni, not just for bringing this university off the edge of despair, but for exercising restraint. Giovanni is decidedly leftist, and originally included two lines critical of the war in Iraq in her poem; she reconsidered those lines out of respect for President Bush’s presence at the university convocation. At a time in which many were rushing to turn tragedy into political points, she held back. And, by the way, the message got through if you were listening for it — which, I guess, is what makes her a poet.

…to the current students. I was as guilty of low expectations as anybody else — on Monday, I usually cringed and turned the volume down when CNN or Fox News announced another student was calling in from Blacksburg. But when I started listening, you guys were handling yourselves incredibly well — intelligent, well-spoken, and thoughtful overall, and keeping your cool under total siege. You made us all proud.

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On community

The toughest thing is the people who don’t understand.

Before it was rewritten under a night-shift editorial staff determined to further brutalize the situation, an insightful column by the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews described not just Virginia Tech’s up-and-coming public image, but the sense of unity there. As best I can recall, his original words mentioned that though the small-town location can occasionally be the subject of jokes around campus, the geographic isolation breeds a tight-knit community among those in Blacksburg, and nearly unmatched loyalty from those who have moved on (not to mention the fifty thousand who come back seven weekends every fall). Other schools have fans, sometimes an entire state full of them. We have the Hokie Nation — we are the Hokie Nation. And though that devotion may seem corny or even misplaced at times, my first thought at work when hearing the news was: who here is a Hokie? And when I realized there weren’t any around as the news got worse, it was time to leave.

SI.com’s Stewart Mandel came closest to that respectful tone in the Post’s stead, describing his own shock at seeing the campus he’s used to wandering in brief interludes during big game coverage appear so out of context. Blacksburg, to him, is a place you come for a vacation from the real world, and to some extent that’s been true.

But it’s even simpler than that for me. Blacksburg isn’t just a place I lived, or the dateline on my diploma, or a fall football destination, or where my brother goes to school, or even where I met my wife. It’s my home, and the people walking across campus in shock, or on the dais at a press conference trying to describe indescribable horrors, are my family.

And we hurt right now, but we’re still a family.

For news coverage with dignity, check:

• Media General: Tragedy in Blacksburg
• WDBJ7 in Roanoke
• The Roanoke Times

image courtesy Rocky Top Talk

Caned out

For the first time since 1995-96, the reigning Stanley Cup champion won’t make the playoffs, as the Carolina Hurricanes officially sealed their fate Tuesday night by losing at Tampa Bay. Cason gave a good roundup of the regular Cane-bloggers’ reactions Wednesday; over on TSB, the Canes board mods are doing their best to hold the recriminations to a single furious thread. In the back of everyone’s mind is casual fan reaction; after the Canes’ last Finals appearance in 2002, attendance picked up, but in the wake of a dead-last finish in 2002-03, ticket sales fell off drastically for the following year. The Canes’ landing isn’t as low this year, but comes from a much greater height.

Particularly redlining the Outrage-O-Meter was Toronto columnist Damien Cox’s ESPN.com article calling the Canes’ Cup run a fluke. The Acid Queen tears it down in her usual style, and hits dead-on in speculating that the reason for the fluke tag is the usual cultural/geographic chauvinism.It’s tough to reasonably call a six-month season plus two-month playoff stretch a fluke in any context shorter than seven to ten years, and certainly not on less than a year’s perspective. The accusation does, though, merit discussion of how both this year and last came about.

A dominant theme of last year’s analysis was how well the Canes geared themselves for the “new NHL.” Jim Rutherford earned Executive of the Year honors in multiple polls for key acquisitions like Matt Cullen, Frantisek Kaberle and Ray Whitney that set the club on a more offensive path; Peter Laviolette’s emphasis on speed and firepower played perfectly into the new rules and enforcement regimen. In a change-filled season, the Canes got smarter faster than any other team in the league, then showed superior endurance and adaptability during their playoff run. Sports is a (mostly) open-source environment, though; successful methods become obvious quickly. Ineptitude doesn’t last unless ownership has no interest in winning, and Bill Wirtz aside, that’s mostly absent from the NHL. Even the Flyers canned Bobby Clarke earlier this year, despite that organization’s noted pride in and loyalty to its past (probably the greatest of any team outside the Original Six). The Canes had an advantage last year; once it was demonstrated, other teams cut the gap significantly during the 2006 off-season.

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Construction next 5 miles days

We’re building a better BTN, complete with comprehensible, self-written CSS and coherent-looking individual and archive pages.

So things may be a little bumpy for a while. Go look at my Columbus photoset while you’re waiting. The aim is to have things here completed on a slightly faster schedule than your average VDOT project, and well ahead of Metro to Dulles.

UPDATE: Interesting discovery: for at least the past month, I’ve had a botnet DoSing the crap out of my politics archive. Thankfully, my webhost is (a) strong and (b) rather slack on load restriction enforcement. Time to rename that category and delete the old pages… apologies to anyone live who gets 404’d and finds their way here.