Oak Creek: "We love you Wisconsin!" That ending to The 70s show, and a high school history teacher were all I knew of the Dairy State here in the US. Tragically, Sunday's shoot-out changed all that. Wisconsin is trending on Twitter and the horror is still fresh in our minds.
From the minute I land, and strike up a conversation, right through to my flight out of Milwaukee, I can't help but think, you never can tell. "This isn't us - we're not like this," the community's wail can be made out. And there is a show of strength and solidarity as Oak Creek join their Sikh brethren at vigils and meetings, setting up a makeshift memorial to the slain.
The cops are intimidating without being stern. They are cordoning off the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, the scene of Sunday's horror, and direct me to where the media crews.
The media vans are all by the bowling alley across the road, patrol cars demarcating the area, along with a strip of Do Not Cross yellow police tape.
Sikh community leaders from New York to Washington are in Oak Creek, as are reporters from the major networks (inside their vans, popping out for their live hits). Reporters and photographers from newspapers, agencies and magazines seem to have congregated in this sleepy suburb. I'm not there quite long enough to meet but see the productivity off the charts. I hear how families of the slain are still in shock, not able to comprehend their loss just yet. But having to deal with the intrusiveness of the media – that is the flip side of this job, that can chill the blood. But as you know, it is to understand the whys and hows, a reflection of the society unable to come to terms with savage, unprovoked violence.
Not that we can understand it.
CNN's Anderson Cooper interviews shooter Wade Michael Page's step-mom, who last saw him when he was a little more than 18 – there was nothing to suggest the bigotry, the white supremacist attitudes she says. She's telling other newscasters he was happy. "It's impossible," you can almost hear, heartbreakingly, in her voice.
I can't even bear to imagine what the families of the six victims are going through. What they're going to go through and re-live for the rest of their lives.
I read an article that White supremacists are worried that Page's association will "give them a bad name". It makes you a little sick, to figure out that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg of hate out there. And we can tweet and sing and chant and believe in love as the best medicine, but until we figure out what is going so twistedly wrong, and why, and how to fix it, why people fall through the cracks, how they arm themselves (America's perennial debate). Until we do, there's going to be one ugly incident after another, and always that nagging fear - it could happen anywhere. More and more lonely people, angry people, who find a way, like Page did, of arming themselves, and wreaking havoc.
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