Shatter Alley

of now, there has not been a motive established; however, Christopher Jones was a former UVA football player.

Sadness and hopelessness overwhelm us.

Carla Williams, director of athletics at UVA, said, “We lost three talented and bright young men. We will never see what their impact on the world would have been, but we will never forget their impact on us.”

She added, “I miss Lavel, D’Sean and Devin. I pray for peace, comfort and hope for their parents and loved ones.”

Misery and death also happened to four students at the University of Idaho who were living off campus. Reports say they were likely stabbed while asleep. Their bodies were discovered on Sunday. The victims were Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves,

Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. The person responsible for this horrible act is still at large. The police have held 38 interviews. Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt told CNN she saw lots of blood on the wall and that the victims had been stabbed multiple times.

College communities are now in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. This trend must not continue because our future leaders need the education that colleges provide.

James B. Ewers Jr., Ed.D., is a former tennis champion at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem and played college tennis at Johnson C. Smith University, where he was all-conference for four years. He is a retired college administrator. He can be reached at overtimefergie.2020@yahoo.com.

Can a poem transcend fury - fury combined with helplessness? Can individual property owners join NATO?

Having no other options than simply to continue seething, let me tear myself psychologically open for a moment here and see what happens. Yeah, this is personal. And yeah, I live in Chicagopart of what would, I presume, be called the “inner city,” which is where trouble happens, right? A lot of people avoid the inner city. Watch out, it’s dangerous.

But it’s been my home for the last 45 years and I love it for many reasons - but, essentially, for its complex, evolving diversity. Back when I was a reporter with a neighborhood beat in this city, I had an astounding realization:

The whole world passes through Chicago! Thus, though my beat was a few square miles of teeming neighborhood, I was, in effect, covering the whole world - not from the top down but from the bottom up. It was a world of struggle and squabble, crime and empathy. It was the melting pot of peace.

Or whatever.

In any case, it was, and is, my home. I’m part of it; it’s part of me. And while our relationship hasn’t been perfect over the years, I have remained ensconced in a sense of community - so much so that I simply take it for granted.

That’s why this hurts so much - an ongoing string of smashed car windows, all while my sad old car was parked in the alley, in the parking spot behind my house. A year ago, the car’s rear window was smashed twice, ten days apart. The reason for it was, and remains, a complete mystery. Though it felt personal, there was no way it could have been.

I don’t “feud” with my neighbors; either they’re good friends or I simply don’t know them. As I wrote at the time, “I felt ‘chosen’ - the winner of Shirley Jackson’s lottery.”

After the second smasheroo, I began parking on the street rather than in the alley. I did so for nine or ten months, then I decided, well, heck, I’m going to start parking in my regular spot again. I was uneasy about doing so, but things were fine. No problems. I began to relax. Then it happened again.

One day last week, as I headed off to the grocery store … huh? A shattered window, shards of glass all over the seat and a fusillade of questions. Each question was the same: Why? Why? Why? Why? And each question felt like a shard of glass.

I refuse to stop loving this community, but I can’t take it for granted, at least not for the time being. And “why” keeps metamorphosing. It disconnects itself from something unique and particu- lar: a mystery vandal with a crowbar (“what’s his problem?”); and expands into something social and structural: What kind of world have we created? What’s the point of splattering the world with hatred? What inner demons seize control of our impulses?

And then, a couple days later, a bit of news made the rounds: A grainprocessing facility in a village in Poland, near the border of Ukraine, was destroyed by what was described as a “Russianmade” missile; two people were killed. And for a moment the world trembled: Is evil Russia expanding the war further into Europe? “Fears of escalation” were sparked.

Whatever just happened - a day later, the determination was made that the strike was the result of a Ukraine-fired missile that went awry - I had a bizarre insight: War isn’t an abstraction. I had just been privileged with my own shards of shock and uncertainty, as though I (or at least my car) were a bit of collateral damage in the midst of some sort of mysterious war. No blood, no death … but something.

And that’s when I reached for my pen, hoping that maybe, maybe, I could pry loose an insight - a spiritual insight? - from what had just happened: not to Poland, not to Ukraine, but at least to me.

But then things got slightly weirder. I took my car to the shop. Next day I went out back to toss out a bag of trash when I noticed - what the heck?

- there was a shiny blue minivan parked in my space. I shrugged. Somebody visiting a neighbor? It was weird, but, well, so what? An hour later, however, I came back outside and noticed a police car, blue lights flashing, parked in the alley directly behind the minivan. I walked over. The officer exited his car.

“It’s a stolen vehicle,” he said, pointing to the minivan. He was waiting for a tow truck.

Uh, OK … I didn’t ask the officer’s permission, but I wrote a poem anyway.

I call it “Shatter Alley”: I snuggle behind the wheel and see shards of glass scattered across the seat of my car. What? No!

Again?

Someone, God knows who, crowbarred a window, claiming the right to hate and hurt a man he doesn’t know, shattering the crystal normalcy of the life I take for granted: turn the key, start the engine, hit the gas and go. Instead I’m left with invisible tears helpless rage shards of glass. This is a work in progress. I haven’t learned anything. In my old (sort of old) age, I basically just sit here staring out the window, wondering what will happen next.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of “Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.”