Grieving for strangers … and attention

I hope I'm not the only one who is appalled at reports of people traveling hundreds of miles, sometimes across the country, to express their grief in person at the site of the Texas school shooting. They are distracting from the families’ and community's distress at their own losses, and are refocusing media attention on the lengths that some people would go to draw attention to themselves.

If these "casual" sympathizers are really so upset about such things happening, maybe they should focus their attention closer to their own homes, to understanding how such bad things can happen to good, innocent people. And on trying to find a non-polemic way of addressing such violations of common expectations — ways that do not involve strangers imposing themselves upon a grieving community.

Bu Wilson

Iowa City