I and my mom had a big fight and I was packing my bags to get out of the house… As I was approaching the door, the news channel started flashing the images and news of the incident and I stood still…

My mom was there too and we both stood in silence and she started crying…

That moment I realized how precious life is and how precious family is….

My prayers are there with all those people who are dearer to god…

That makes sense. Silence can be very powerful, and silence can be a dangerous thing. The same way it can make people feel better and help them move on, it can also make people stand around an issue forever and hate others for various reasons.

I also do not know what is right or wrong. The shooting was terrible, agreed. Now if we move onto Darfur from the current topic, silence makes even more sense; you are absolutely right. However, I am a bit confused as to how that is related to the topic at hand? You are right also that many entities are ignoring the issues of different places like Darfur, which is resulting in more civil wars and more people dying simply because people are not doing anything.

Your “advice” on the genocide is really interesting. For people who have not yet read about that, Miriam posted about Darfur recently.

Thank you for replying again Miriam. It is definitely not an easy world, but we can try to make it simpler and safer everyday through various things. I wonder if there is a single key element to everything like the Holocaust, Darfur and the recent Virginia Shootings.

Ana, thank you for coming here. You can probably send letters to people that know the families. However, you may have to call a few people to find out the appropriate addresses, like address of the city counsel who may be willing to forward all mail to the families of the victims.

Here are a few numbers and addresses if you want to contact the people who somehow knew the 33 people shot and the other people injured, or were there:

Memorial Website at Virginia Tech

The Hokie Memorial Fund - 1-800-533-1144

Town of Blacksburg Community Relations Office at 540-961-1199 or e-mail them at tobinfo@blacksburg.gov

Someone at one of those sites, e-mail or phone numbers may be able to tell you which appropriate address to send the letters to, or how you can make something for those affected.

If you find out anything Ana, I would really appreciate it and be happy if you could come back and share it here, or if you could e-mail me the information. I would then post it here so everyone else can see.

Thank you again Ana, I really appreciate you taking the time to come and commenting about what you and your middle school are planning to do! Making something for those who were affected directly at Virginia Tech is a very nice thing to do! I wish you and others at your middle school the best!

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

You’ve been through some really terrible things in your life which nobody should ever have to go through, and your ability to move forwards and write about life is praiseworthy. Your perspective holds even more weight because of your experiences.

I don’t know what’s right or wrong. The Virginia shooting was terrible, and every death is a tragedy, but there is one place in the world where a genocide is actually taking place, and nobody seems to care: Darfur. The way the world is ignoring the plight of the people there is reminiscent of the Holocaust. An Israeli blogger began an initiative where bloggers end all posts, no matter what they’re writing on, with the following sentence:

“Moreover, I advise that the genocide in Darfur must be stopped.” I’ve decided to adopt this on my blog, and you can see a more detailed explanation there.

Thanks again for responding. It’s not an easy world, eh?

I personally thing WordPress should focus on only WordPress news in the main dashboard. I am guessing once you become part of the Planet Network feed, you can post anything and it may get displayed.

I am not sure either how April 30th came to light, but I think it is just the end of the month and a few weeks away from the incident, so it will allow people to spread the word further. Having it on May 30th may have already had most people not participating, as most parts of the blogosphere that may be participating will surely move on quickly and stick to some other “current” news event. You are right: the families are still alive. We can focus on them and offer some help if we want to do something about the situation.

Miriam, thanks for the comment and thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate it.

I agree that people can choose to be silent. That is not offensive to me. The thing I find offending or illogical as how this day is being promoted as something that the majority of the blogosphere promotes, or how such a thing is the only logical thing to do. That is my whole point of this post. I hope I was clear on that. If not, my apologies for being unclear.

Also, I am not sure how the blogosphere, which is already posting different things and enjoying time, some bloggers even forgetting about it within a day, need to “deal” with this stuff. What I mean is this: most people are just “acting” that they care. Forget Lorelle; this post is aimed at the idea and not Lorelle, otherwise I would have named this post “On Lorelle & Day of Silence.” Majority of the bloggers did not change single thing in their life, other than having an extra post count, to show any remorse for the death or do anything useful that helps the dead people, or the direct relatives. It is fine to not do anything, but in my view, it is not fine to pretend to care just because it is a hot topic on the news. That is just plain rude and disrespectful to those who died.

Also, I am not aiming the post at Lorelle. You are right that no one is telling me what to do. I chose myself to tell people how to listen to ideas and how to dissect them to figure out whether or not an idea is good for them or not. That is why I wrote this, so people can decide to analyze something first instead of just jumping on the bandwagon.

I have lived in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel and Russia among other places since I was a kid. I have experienced a lot that what I will not write about on this blog, as my blog is not “My experiences of death and suffering” but a site I can use to tell others happier or different things. I do not let my own experience judge my opinions when others are involved in those opinions. I have seen a lot right in front of my eyes to having myself and my family targeted also since I was a kid. I have seen my own family members killed in front of me when I was 8, and I have also been shot when I was a teenager simply because of not following the dominant culture religion in an extremist country [you can guess which one]. I think I know what I am talking about. That is why, because of not allowing my past experiences and those feelings and memories affect my decisions and opinions regarding unrelated issues now, I see no reason on writing a post on Holocaust or Israel and bringing it up to get people to feel guilty about something they do not want to deny, and make them jump on board on the “Day of Blog Silence” trend since not doing otherwise will make such people, who fall for such a tactic of letting their emotions be taken over by a holocaust post not related to the current situation, will feel guilty. Or am I mistaken about something, and we are to look and compare the two since both involve deaths and murder of innocent people, regardless of the scale or reasons? I thought the entire topic was about the people dying at Virginia tech and not death of innocent people itself, since people are only getting hyper about this situation and the new internet trend and not about the deaths of thousands of innocent people who have already died since the time I wrote my post above.

You live in Israel, and you must also be experiencing things first hand. However, let me ask you think: how can we use our feelings for the Holocaust to judge this new situation? Sure, Hitler and this kid were both killers. However, one wanted to eliminate a race, and the other wanted to do something specific that we still don’t know, yet we know that people from all over the world died in the recent shooting. Should I just let the Holocaust or my own experience, which is more terrifying to me than the Holocaust because I saw it with my own eyes and experienced it myself too, let me do whatever and say “I have experience on this, and Silent day is the answer because I am emotional and I said so!“? Please let me know if I am mistaken somewhere in any logic that I may be depending on.

Maybe I am looking at all of this from a wrong perspective. Please let me know what you think. I am not here to defend an idea but probably to criticize one, so the reasons I am using to target an idea seem to be not strong enough for you, which is interesting in my view. I would be more than happy to change my views if I see that I may be mistaken, misinformed or confused about something. There is no shame in being mistaken about something, specially when it is something I am passionate about and I would love to make sure I am going fast in the right direction.

Thanks again Miriam. I hope you will stop by and participate more. I hope I am not confusing or offending in my comment. Please let me know if you any questions. I would love to hear more from you on this topic, as some of what you say makes a lot of sense to me.

I live in Israel. Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day I’m in awe by the power of the 2 minutes of silence observed by the whole country. It is something you have to experience to understand. Lorelle was simply trying to get that across. As someone who observes this silence, I can testify to the impact this has on remembering those who are not fortunate to be here today, and thinking about what we are doing here, who we are, and what the goals of our lives should be. Sometimes there is value to silence, but no one is telling you what to do. Write if that’s what you want to do. You won’t be alone, and the thought police won’t come knocking at your door.

What is up with the news and Wordpress dashboard posts? If it was there for awareness then its pretty pointless as you might have already heard it in the news or other forms of media.

I find it quite odd that people just pick a random date and say, “today should be the moment of silence”..but we can actually take action as families or friends are still alive, not dead. Whereas a day such as Remembrance day, we can say that we have a special day dedicated to those whose lives were lost because there aren’t really much connection as to who were the families and such since it isn’t from a specific location like Blacksburg.

Also, thanks for replying to my comment. It is good to know that you leave comments to build relations and networks with other people. Also, about the reason you chose 28k as your technorati target, lol!

inspirationbit, good points and thanks for the explanation. The whole purpose for my action, or the letters, is to show the blogosphere that something as simple as pasting a 39 cent stamp on an envelope and mailing it can do more than just observing a day of silence. Also, Virginia Tech and other places, if they get letters, will hopefully pass them to the families or post them somewhere. At least the city officials should. If they don’t, I do not know any other possible way at the moment to find out their addresses. Either way, at least the message will be clear: doing something is better than simply having an internet meme that does not seem to be making any sense. My letter may not be received by the family, but if it is, it will show what I am talking about and how/why/if I care, and how this event has/has-not changed my life. The day of silence, on the other hand, does not show anything to the families in my view.

You are right: talking about this publicly and doing legal things will help. My effort, or supposed effort, is to mainly show the “One Day of Silence” bloggers what others thing may be even better or more logical. For some reason, however, these silent movements regarding this situation sound like the people who just sit out there and keep saying they care, while other people do all the extra work out in the field.

I agree that saying something is more “important” than being silent in such cases. You are right about another thing also: maybe someone else, or even your own post, is a better solution than my own. I am speaking from my experience, and thus of course, my opinions are unconsciously and directly biased because of the reasons my opinions are based on, the same way everyone’s opinion is biased in a way.

As you said yourself - nobody talks or does anything about other innocent people dying every day all over the world due to hunger, wars, natural disasters and many other reasons. Mailing letters to all their families won’t make any difference in their lives and won’t improve the world. What will make a difference is publicly and openly talking about them and all the problems our society is facing, protesting or demanding certain laws, and voting for the right people.

One thing I know for sure - in cases like this one it’s important to say something instead of being silent. Expressing your thoughts, posing questions on your blog may prompt others to start thinking and analyzing the event rather than passively following the herd. Just like my blog post has motivated you to take a certain action, hopefully this post would stimulate others to think and act for themselves.

On to your comments on moi, I don’t leave comments just to get comments back actually. I leave comments and try to find random blogs I’m letting people know what I’m doing and I email the owners but I don’t really leave comments saying link me! I leave comments to tell people I’ve been to the site my actual thoughts etc. And the reason why I chose 28,000 is engadget has 27k+ links to it so to be #1 I need at least 28,000