The cursor's been blinking for ten minutes -- I called up this file, adjusted the "Previous" and "Next" links on the April 15 version, saved it, erased all the text, and then "Saved As" with today's date. I entered today's date and the day, dropped down to the empty space for the new text, and sat. And sat. And sat some more.

Colorado -- the very name conjures romantic visions for me. I spent Christmas vacation of 1970 there, the first time I was away from my family for the holidays. I remember clean air, snow that crunched under hiking boots, mile-high munchies, New Year's Eve in a cabin in Rocky Mountain National Park, and a restaurant in Denver called The Library where every table was in a book-filled private alcove. I still have the airline luggage tag and a small rock (a pink-streaked quartz) I picked up outside the cabin (another felony, probably). I've never been back, and the place remains in my memory magical and fantastic.

The news out of Colorado is more disturbing than that out of Kosovo. The tragedy took place in a high school, turf I know well. Except for being a little larger, Columbine High is exactly like the school where I taught for thirty years, like the school where I send my daughter.

It's hard for me to envision myself walking out of the Balkans with my possessions in a cattle cart. I'm afraid I have neither the physical nor the emotional strength to last very long with that kind of deprivation. But I have no trouble imagining diving under a library table with frightened teenagers, conscious that I'm responsible for these kids and need to set an example, or hurrying to an evacuation site to stand with other mothers and wait for word. And I know that the terror and the pain I imagine fall short of the real deal.

All day the e-mail discussion lists I subscribe to have crackled with comments about Colorado, including one exchange that degenerated quickly into a sad flame war of name-calling and obscenities. I've deleted most of these posts unread (250 so far). One of them caught my attention -- it suggested that all of us are responsible for the loneliness and self-hatred that led the gunmen to their horrific acts.

At first my hackles went up. I am NOT responsible for the isolation of these troubled, murderous children, I wanted to say. As a parent I'm involved in my child's life -- I know and trust her friends and their parents, I know her activities, I'm involved, I'm there!! As a teacher I was there -- if I raise my eyes from this keyboard I can see a photo of myself with a young man who wore black from head to hem and always carried a knife shoved down his left boot (this I learned much, much later). Abandoned by his mother, he lived with a frequently absent, emotionally abusive father -- a situation not readily apparent to an outsider.

He has said his involvement with me and my family saved his life, but I've always thought that overstates our contribution. While I know that we helped to bring out the best in him, that we gave him the positive attention he wasn't getting at home, I think it was his own essential character that led him to choose life rather than death, to build the earth rather than to destroy it. That's not the choice the boys in Colorado made.

Of course, I wouldn't have gotten defensive if I didn't think there was a bit of truth to what the list member wrote. All of us, one way or another, marginalize others, sometimes without even knowing it. And then I read the post more carefully. Rather than suggesting that we are all responsible for the terrible isolation of those outcast youngsters, she might be saying that it is necessary for all of us to contemplate the degree of pain that would lead to such a tragedy. That I can take responsibility for.

And so that is what I do tonight -- I contemplate the pain, and weep for those who must feel it to a degree I hope I am never called on to experience.