By now you all know about the horrific events that took place today in my new home town, Blacksburg, Virginia. The campus is about 5 miles from my house. This morning we heard sirens screaming down the nearby highway towards town -- presumably they were ambulances. We've had such high winds since last night that I'm surprised we still have any shingles and shutters on the house, and medical evacuation helicopters certainly could not fly in these conditions. I was telling somebody just the other day how different this area is from Philadelphia, where the local TV news invariably leads with stories about murders, other violent crimes, deadly house fires in the slums, and so gruesomely on. Around here, the local TV news top stories are usually about school board squabbles, bluegrass festivals, coyote sightings, and once in a while a bad crash on the interstate. What a relief to be so far from big-city violence, I said. Today, however, more Americans died in Blacksburg than in Baghdad. No victims' names have been made public as yet. We're keeping our fingers crossed that none of the fatalities will turn out to be young members of the Virginia Tech Amateur Radio Association. 73 - Kay N3KN