Innocence lost...

I do feel such sorrow for the people touched by the recent tragedy at a small Amish one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. From my limited contact with the Amish and Mennonites (who to the Amish are practically decadent, believe it or not), I knew the murderer was not Amish.

So Dubya, I guess feeling that he has to do something to appear like he cares, will be holding a summit trying to connect the recent shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin, and now Pennsylvania. To me, any fool can see that the only thing that connects them is the tragedy of these schools being used as killing fields by disturbed people. Each perpetrator was completely different: one was a student, in another a deranged drifter, and finally an (to all accounts) otherwise stable father who snapped. Plus each community and type of school was different. Going back to Dubya's ill-conceived gesture, most likely he'll wind up doing what he always does when faced with a problem: look blank and then hide behind a heartfelt prayer, rather than there be any real outcome.

Who knows what the answer is? Perhaps there is no one answer. Maybe it's a combination of many things whose final tragic outcome was enabled by the ready accessibility of guns.

What I do know for certain is that for so many children and so many families, there is innocence irretrievably lost.

- Farmer Ted