All mass shootings are horrific, but for me the Brown University situation has been particularly upsetting. I grew up outside of Providence and spent my childhood and youth among the university music buildings and bookstores, among the East Side shops and streets. Then in my twenties Tom and I lived for several years on Governor Street, a block or so from this shooting, while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. Our son Paul later lived in the neighborhood, too, when he was enrolled in a Brown summer drama program. Providence was my first city, Brown was the center of my music life, that neighborhood was the spring of my love affair with Tom, and so this shooting is geographic distress, memory distress, in addition to all of its other distresses.

I sit here now, in a couch corner, in a living room, in a little house, in another small New England city neighborhood, one not so different from the East Side--watery, tree-lined, domesticated; shops and sidewalks and students.

We cling to our innocence because what else can we do?