21 April 1999: An Uninvolved Local Perspective

The whole city is treading carefully today. Everything feels quieter; even as I recognize that I might look for things to be quieter, I think it really is quieter.

The first I heard of it was around 1:00 yesterday, when I leaned into someone's office to ask him something and heard something that sounded like "Old Lyme High School" on his radio, which is tuned ever and only to NPR. "A shooting at Columbine High School," he told me.

Only when I got home and turned on the news did I realize the extent of the shooting. I had dismissed "shooting at Columbine High School" as "not a shooting at Old Lyme High School," as "Columbine High School means nothing to me," and as "another incidence of school violence, quelle surprise."

The first thing I saw on the news was Colorado's wooden new governor Owens attempting to feign sympathy. At least when WJC feels your pain, you can tell he means it, if only while he utters the words. Then the fluctuating body count. Then students stammering and inarticulate. Afterward, the implications.

It's Hitler's birthday, I told myself. Can't be a coincidence. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building coincided with the anniversary of the end of the Branch Davidian Cult, and the bombers chose that date to emphasize their point. I had half-expected something, somewhere in the U.S., on the 19th; and I wonder for how many April 19ths the country will be on tenterhooks. The 20th of April carries a broader, more global implication.

When Timothy McVeigh was tried here, I gauged the import of the trial not by local but by network and CNN coverage. Same with the Summit of the Eight. Same with this. For hours, CNN barely paused for breath.

Today, the metropolitan area seems to have paused for that breath. Metropolitan Denver comprises six counties or parts thereof, a variegated sprawl that is now looking about itself. Today no Jefferson County school is open, nor any Denver high school; plus one Denver middle and one Denver elementary school are closed. Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, and Douglas schools are all open with tighter security--at least for the day.

Having biked to work yesterday and therefore excused myself from aerobics, I didn't venture into the outside world until the bus this morning. The bus was quiet. Emptier than it is on any of the subholidays, and no one chatted. The office was hushed, as coworkers acknowledged each other with subdued greetings. Then at lunch, I walked up and down the 16th Street Mall and then down Broadway to the library. I wanted to be out, vital and active as a charm against this action. But the Mall was downcast too, the sparser numbers reflecting the emptier buses and the fewer people out meeting yet fewer eyes and walking in nonleisurely trajectories .

I had noticed from my office that the flags of the State Capitol and the City and County Building were at half-staff, but still somehow to walk through park between those two imposing edifices made me notice again the flags' position. Perhaps because both buildings had more than usual traffic, conspicuously more against the wan, depopulated downtown.

Local news vans are nothing remarkable at the Capitol; they're regularly there and something we're continuously, quasi-aware of. But all of them plus other satellite hook-up trucks, and the emptiness, and the flags, and the incoming cold front with clouds: a somber day.

I read the diary-l traffic about the incident and the usual reactions: the Jeremiads and the Jobs, the proponents of the 2nd Amendment and the advocates of gun control. At one point discussion between two contributors deteriorated long past the point they should have taken it outside (the list). One (whose journal I read) baited, swore at, and belittled the other (whose journal I do not know), who did not respond in kind. The first left a bad taste in my mouth: right or not, or more right than the other or not, the animosity he evinced discussing an (off-topic) issue seemed to me of a piece with the shooters, just not as extreme: the same reaction in an adverse situation, to lash out, to be unable to conduct himself civilly.