My students will tell you that for better or worse I’m rarely at a loss for words. But today I just feel weary, & sad, & tired of talking. I was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech twenty-odd years ago, a double major in philosophy and – yes – English. It’s hard to watch the videos of the buildings I spent four years taking classes in, the drill field I used to cross every morning, snow, sun, or (mostly, it seems in retrospect) rain. It’s harder than I’d imagined it would be to see the distraught or nonchalant undergraduates in front of the CNN microphones, young people who look much as they did all those years ago. I’ll write about biography or poetry tomorrow, or the next day: tonight I just wish I were in Blacksburg, & could do something.