A week after the violence, the Amish have cleared the site of the building and planted various grasses and clover to return the site to pastureland.
What a contrast to another site of violence, ground zero, where the bickering and gawking continue five years later.
Perhaps it’s as simple as the vast difference in the value of the two sites financially, but the Amish seem to have the right values about moving on.
IN THE COMMENTS: Is snark called for? If so, Jeff has it:
I'm sure we'll see another letter to the Times, postmarked Park Slope or the Upper West Side, stating that no healing can begin until the Amish understand the root causes of the murderers grudge against young schoolgirls!
Perhaps the field will need the addition of a Ford or Soros funded International Center for Learning showcasing the achievements of child murderers that have been shamefully hidden by the theocratic Amish culture.
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I am reminded of a scriptural passage that, in which, I am sure the Amish take great comfort:
"Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
-- Job 1: 20-21 (KJV)
There will be another school built on another Amish place. It will be as simple as the one it replaces. The children will be tought as they have been tought for generation after generation.
My great grandfather tought at one of those schools in Lancaster County in the late 1900's. I have a picture of him with his students, clad in their farm clothes, in front of that school. Here we are over one hundred years later, and that educational tradition still lives on.
I sometimes wonder if children educated this way are not as well educated in eight years as those educated in "modern" public schools in twelve.
No they don't. They don't do a very good job in acknowleging, or standing up to, evil.
You don't forgive it, and you don't act like it doesn't exist.
Anabaptists, and ridiculous Mennonites....are not folks Christians should take their cues from.
Although, I do admire their refusing to be dependent on the digital revolution and gadgets.
Spiritually, though, they are whacked.
Peace, Maxine
Just because you tear down a building, doesn't mean you move on, and doesn't mean you aren't haunted by what happened there. What it takes...that comes from within ourselves, and it's more than what we do with the physical representation of our grieving.
Logically, Ron, you have a point.
But you can see the symbolic value in the ritual of razing a building and making a pasture where bad stuff happened, can't you?
Even if it doesn't help everyone, it may help some among the victims' friends and relatives.
I'm sure we'll see another letter to the Times, postmarked Park Slope or the Upper West Side, stating that no healing can begin until the Amish understand the root causes of the murderers grudge against young schoolgirls!
Perhaps the field will need the addition of a Ford or Soros funded International Center for Learning showcasing the achievements of child murderers that have been shamefully hidden by the theocratic Amish culture.
They should include Chomsky quotes in the memorial.
I'm sorry - but what a crock of shit statement that is.
They've actually been working on the Ground Zero site since day 1.
1) Cleaning up the destruction
2) Repairing the subway and Path stations and building a temporary Path station that has been up and running for several years.
3) Repairing the "bath tab" that is holding back the Hudson River.
4) Blasting for the foundation of the Freedom Tower that is currently underway.
Are people even aware that the steel for the Freedom Tower has now been produced? It had to be built out of Luxembourg and has now arrived in the United States. It will take at least a year to build the foundation.
People have absolutely no clue what's involved with building a skyscraper of the size of Freedom Tower. And the idea that we should just rush and build a tower based on the first crappy design is bogus too.
Much better to take their time and get the design right, for a building that we hope we last for 500 years.
And there wer complicated legal issues with Ground Zero. Such as the fact that the government did not have legal right to rebuild the property. Insurance disputes that had to be resolved. Unless people think we should just trample on property rights to rebuild.
Oh - and by the way - 7 World Trade has been rebuilt and has people working in it already.
You don't forgive it, and you don't act like it doesn't exist.
And your evidence that they are doing either is...? Or are you just misinterpreting their compassion for his family, who had no part in his evil, as such?
But in NYC, the Cult of Victimhood leaves us The Pit...5 years on.
Actually, the cult of victimhood is spearheaded by people like Cedarford and other conservative bloggers.
Let's not forget the Freedom Center - which was sabotaged by a bunch of hick, right-wing, non New Yorkers. And then they have the audacity to complain that nothing is built there - as they sabaotage one project after another. Frank Gehry's cultural center will be the next project to sabotaged by people like Cedarford.
And the original World Trade Center started in 1966 and wasn't completed until 1972. That's six years. And you didn't have to deal with inconviences like finding random body parts and figuring out how to dispose of them properly.
And let's not forget that the market (funny how conservatives don't like the "market" when it gets in their way) is implying that people do not want to work in 100 story office towers on Ground Zero. Yet - here are we are - going ahead and building four towers over 1000 square feet - even though everyone I know has said that they would not work in them.
So we have the government promising to pay inflated rates to move city workers in there.
Rejecting the Digital Revolution--and the resulting lack of creativity/originality, lack of charm...
... and denouncing Wireless Gadgets (radiation) is not retreat; it's healthy.
derve: That's one of my favorite poems by Carl Sandburg, but I always get that one mixed up with 'Fog'...."I am the fog; I cover all"
BOTTOM LINE: The Amish are severely misguided spiritually. Healthwise, physically---they are better off not having the stress of overreliance/overdependence on gadgets.
Peace, Maxine
At the risk of stating the obvious, the Amish life is agragrian-based. Their daily lives are arranged such that, by design, their routines must go on (one example would be any animals that require care daily, and not just once; another would be seasonal/season-based activities that can't wait).
I think this also helps explain the response. In a number of respects, it's similar to the way in which traditional farming communities (suc as the one in which my mother was raised, and her parents before her) reacted to things.
It's also something that specifically has come up in recent conversations I've had with friends who live/work in Lancaster or have close, regular ties there.
Jeff,
You know what, you're right, this tragedy in Amish country DID give you a GREAT opportunity to take a pot-shot at all of those pointy-headed New York liberals. You REALLY let'us have it. And with good reason! Park Slope and Upper West Side liberals ARE the root cause of extremist violence! It all makes sense to me.
Terry
Holy cats. Downtownlad is the voice of reason? My world is all askew.
Well, again, Maxine, you claim they're misguided spiritually, but I don't see the evidence. You suggest that they are "forgiving evil" and "acting like it doesn't exist", and I think it would be good for you to state just how they are doing so. I don't see that at all.
We often hear, "what's happening to the world today with all the shootings?".
Anyone remember this one?
On July 18, 1984, an unemployed security guard, James Oliver Huberty, walked into a McDonald's in San Ysidro, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and began shooting. Armed with three guns, he killed 21 people, including five children and six teenagers, and wounded 19 before he was shot and killed by a police sniper.
At the time, his 77-minute rampage was the largest single-day, single-gunman massacre in U.S. history.
"It was new then, as flying an airplane into the World Trade Center was new in 2001," said Chuck Foster, the police sniper who ultimately ended the rampage. "All of the responders -- the police officers, the firefighters, the paramedics -- weren't foreseeing the scope of this killing spree."
In the years since Huberty's rampage, his gruesome death total has been surpassed, but people who study homicide say there is something lasting and shocking about the McDonald's massacre.
"I think a lot of it had to do not with the victim count but with the location, that it was a McDonald's. Everyone has a McDonald's in their town; they connected with it," said James Alan Fox, a professor at criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston who studies mass murders.
In the weeks after the tragedy, thousands of sightseers drove by the restaurant to gawk before McDonald's razed the building. Survivors and relatives of the victims received letters from around the country. After a lengthy debate about what to do with the site, a community college was built, along with a memorial of white marble blocks to honor the victims. Two blocks away is a new McDonald's, which opened in 1985.
Anything that stops another horrid Frank Gehry pile from forming in my otherwise Gehry unafflicted city is ok by me. But otherwise there are agreeable points in both downtownlad's and Cedarford's comments. One point of disagreement: The cult of mourning is not a recent invention, Cedarford. The kind of mourning you object to has its roots in 18th and especially 19th century England. If you think public grief sessions are out of control now, read up on Victorian England. They used to photograph dead babies and print the pictures on cabinet cards and weave things out of dead people's hair. Victoria wore black for the rest of her life after the Prince Consort died in 1861.
Maxine is expressing the timeless view that living like unevolved agrarian quasi-primates is somehow virtuous. It's the "noble savage" idea in 19th century clothing. Did you know that the Amish family that lived next to one of my high-school friend's houses had a telephone in the barn? And the kids used to come over and play Super Nintendo games with us?
Well, there's a middle ground. I admire they're not being tethered to these gadget/devices.
I don't admire their insistence on looking Evil squarely in the eye, and going up head-to-head with it.
Forgiveness is an idea that takes time. It doesn't happen in a day.
And, if it does, they allow the evil to come right back in again....copycat shootings etc...
Cultivating the evil, and welcoming it......I don't believe that the "wife" is as innocent as she is being made out to be.
These people, these Anabaptist, Mennonite simpletons are in denial.
But I do like the whole idea of lessening dependence on technology, which causes physical illness, and a lack of creativity.
Peace, Maxine
I'm sure we'll see another letter to the Times, postmarked Park Slope or the Upper West Side, stating that no healing can begin until the Amish understand the root causes of the murderers grudge against young schoolgirls!
The Amish forgave the murderer. They even attended his funeral.
Fuck you, prick. You're not fit to wipe their asses.
"Fuck you, prick. You're not fit to wipe their asses."
I'm sure the Amish would appreciate your plain-spoken charm, pinkshirt.
I'm surprised you're not denouncing them as theocrats. Isn't that the far left's approved response to the (Christian) religious?
Anything that stops another horrid Frank Gehry pile from forming in my otherwise Gehry unafflicted city is ok by me.
What city are you talking about? New York already has a Gehry building, whose shell is already completed on the West Side Highway and 23rd street. And it's getting rave reviews. Not to mention the skyscraper that is due to go up at Beekman street and of course Ratnerville in Brooklyn. And the culturual center if we're lucky. That would be four huge Gehry projects for New York.
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