Elephant

While reading late last week in the waiting area of a local Kaiser Permanente clinic (don't ask), I came across a quote that I've always found to be quite profound and yet very simple:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

Sometimes this idea holds up; other times the present's semblance to what has come before is just eerily obvious.
Case in point: The opening of the Columbine Memorial at Clement Park in Littleton on Sept. 21.
The massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, was one of the first journalism assignments I had — culling together "man-on-the-street" student reactions from a suburban Kansas City high school for the Kansas City Star. I have not made the story something I spend exceptional amounts of time studying, but it is one that stays with me, as it does for so many people: kids killing kids is frightening and intriguing.
That it took more than eight years to memorialize the lost lives and tragedy suffered is amazing to me, but it's the social effects — the ebb and flow of safety concerns — upon which I find myself transfixed.
As a relatively young man, I can remember what life in the education system was like before and after Columbine. I know the stories of students suspended or taken aside by administrators in the hours and days following Columbine because they wore just a little too much black.
Without making too light a statement about something so serious, I cannot recall a more heinous affront to such a stylish piece of clothing, such as the trenchcoat, as was seen after the responsible adults charged with educating (and now protecting) America's youth examined closely the photos of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and administered schoolyard justice accordingly.
The comparisons to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the questions about racial profiling were raised are inescapable.
People like me are quite fond of pontificating on the nature of history. Some of them love to say that the course of human events are cyclical: Periods of freedom lead to excess. Excess leads to tightening of social controls. This, in turn, leads to social revolutions, leading to periods of freedom once again.
But this phenomenon, if it indeed exists, cannot be viewed solely in a negative light if what you seek is freedom.
Another case in point: Word comes from the campus of Delaware State University that it's quick response to the shooting of two students last week was motivated by the memories of the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech University earlier this year.
Just as some will tell you human freedom is rocking back and forth through time, there's more than one aspect of it all to consider. Maybe it's not all cut and clear as some would have you imagine... Maybe the similarities and differences between our present and past are a bit more complex than the sound bites and bullet points would suggest.