That is what normal people do when confronted with the tragedy that was Sandy Hook a year ago today. But some people those who aren't normal they don't weep quietly when they read or think about this tragedy because they are incapable of feeling empathy or any other emotion, and instead mock and ridicule those who are struck by this horrible tragedy. It's a tragedy and anyone who can't see what these people have been through. Losing a child is the worst tragedy that could befall a parent with a young child. But to mock those who suffered and lost children in this tragedy is as my best friend says simply "inhuman." And I concur! But I think only the scum of the earth could be this inhuman. Or simply put monsters something like this one described by Dante in Canto XVII from The Divine Comedy (written 1308 to 1322; published 1555).
"Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail,
who crosses mountains, shatters weapons, walls!
Behold the one whose stench fills all the world!"
Behold Grind and Billy; the source of the stench!
A Year of Painful, Daily Reminders in Newtown
By MICHAEL WILSON
Published: December 13, 2013
NEWTOWN, Conn. — The woman rose from her corner table at the Sandy Hook Diner one morning last week, the old restaurant nearly empty after the breakfast rush. Before she made it to the door, a man stood up from his own table and smiled.
In honor of those lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, lit 26 candles and observed a moment of silence at the White House on Saturday.
The woman, Scarlett Lewis, met the man a year ago, last Dec. 14. It was the day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, and when her son was missing in the chaos, she rushed to the man’s house nearby, where other children had run, to look for him, not yet knowing that he was one of the 20 children killed.
She would see the man in the weeks that followed, unsure of where to place him at first, her memories a jumble from that day. But the two have become acquaintances, and in the diner, they hugged.
Ms. Lewis pulled a rubber bracelet off her wrist that bore her son’s name, Jesse, and gave it to the man, who took it and thanked her, even though he already has so many bracelets like it, memorializing Jesse and the other children, that he has lost count.
Another brief but wrenching encounter that has become a part of daily life here. “People do know who you are,” Ms. Lewis said later. “They’ll just say, ‘Can I just give you a hug?’ ”
The people of Newtown and its neighborhood of Sandy Hook have made it explicitly clear: We are not holding a public anniversary ceremony. Please stay away. “If we build it, they will come,” said E. Patricia Llodra, Newtown’s first selectman. “So we have to not build it.”
But to spend time in Newtown is to see, a year later, a sort of building process well underway, one with no end in sight. Someone who never heard of Sandy Hook Elementary School or what happened there, when 20 children and six staff members were shot to death by Adam Lanza, could pass through the town a year later and immediately sense that this place is different from the outside world. The wound remains too raw to tell how the scar will turn out. The school has been razed, the memorials concluded. But reminders of what Newtown has become known for, to the dismay of everyone in it, remain everywhere.
Those reminders are perhaps most strikingly apparent in the way the people interact with the mothers and fathers of those slain first graders.
“People come up and get nervous,” Ms. Lewis said. “They start talking a mile a minute,” almost babbling to fill the air, even talking about their own problems. Or they try to ignore her: “You see them glance furtively at you and not want to engage, which is totally fine, too.”
Another parent, David Wheeler, wrote about life after his son Ben’s death that day in an essay published recently in the magazine The Newtowner.
“I’ve heard it called ‘The Newtown Handshake,’ ” he wrote. “After a moment it becomes clear that shaking hands is not nearly enough and a hug is inevitable. Women, men, people I’ve never met, it doesn’t seem to matter.”
A new local vocabulary has grown around the day. No one refers to the shooting by that word, but rather, as 12/14, the way one might say 9/11. The phrase, “She’s a mom,” is understood to mean the mother of a victim. Two women once entered the diner, strangers to the owner, and when 12/14 came up, one of them said quietly, “We’re moms.” The six women killed in the school that day are often called “the guardians.”
One woman recently complimented another on a pin she was wearing, and the wearer explained it was for her daughter, a teacher killed at Sandy Hook. The first woman told a friend later that she went off and cried.
Story continued at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/n...-year-of-painful-daily-reminders.html?hp&_r=0
"Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail,
who crosses mountains, shatters weapons, walls!
Behold the one whose stench fills all the world!"
Behold Grind and Billy; the source of the stench!
A Year of Painful, Daily Reminders in Newtown
By MICHAEL WILSON
Published: December 13, 2013
NEWTOWN, Conn. — The woman rose from her corner table at the Sandy Hook Diner one morning last week, the old restaurant nearly empty after the breakfast rush. Before she made it to the door, a man stood up from his own table and smiled.
In honor of those lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, lit 26 candles and observed a moment of silence at the White House on Saturday.
The woman, Scarlett Lewis, met the man a year ago, last Dec. 14. It was the day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, and when her son was missing in the chaos, she rushed to the man’s house nearby, where other children had run, to look for him, not yet knowing that he was one of the 20 children killed.
She would see the man in the weeks that followed, unsure of where to place him at first, her memories a jumble from that day. But the two have become acquaintances, and in the diner, they hugged.
Ms. Lewis pulled a rubber bracelet off her wrist that bore her son’s name, Jesse, and gave it to the man, who took it and thanked her, even though he already has so many bracelets like it, memorializing Jesse and the other children, that he has lost count.
Another brief but wrenching encounter that has become a part of daily life here. “People do know who you are,” Ms. Lewis said later. “They’ll just say, ‘Can I just give you a hug?’ ”
The people of Newtown and its neighborhood of Sandy Hook have made it explicitly clear: We are not holding a public anniversary ceremony. Please stay away. “If we build it, they will come,” said E. Patricia Llodra, Newtown’s first selectman. “So we have to not build it.”
But to spend time in Newtown is to see, a year later, a sort of building process well underway, one with no end in sight. Someone who never heard of Sandy Hook Elementary School or what happened there, when 20 children and six staff members were shot to death by Adam Lanza, could pass through the town a year later and immediately sense that this place is different from the outside world. The wound remains too raw to tell how the scar will turn out. The school has been razed, the memorials concluded. But reminders of what Newtown has become known for, to the dismay of everyone in it, remain everywhere.
Those reminders are perhaps most strikingly apparent in the way the people interact with the mothers and fathers of those slain first graders.
“People come up and get nervous,” Ms. Lewis said. “They start talking a mile a minute,” almost babbling to fill the air, even talking about their own problems. Or they try to ignore her: “You see them glance furtively at you and not want to engage, which is totally fine, too.”
Another parent, David Wheeler, wrote about life after his son Ben’s death that day in an essay published recently in the magazine The Newtowner.
“I’ve heard it called ‘The Newtown Handshake,’ ” he wrote. “After a moment it becomes clear that shaking hands is not nearly enough and a hug is inevitable. Women, men, people I’ve never met, it doesn’t seem to matter.”
A new local vocabulary has grown around the day. No one refers to the shooting by that word, but rather, as 12/14, the way one might say 9/11. The phrase, “She’s a mom,” is understood to mean the mother of a victim. Two women once entered the diner, strangers to the owner, and when 12/14 came up, one of them said quietly, “We’re moms.” The six women killed in the school that day are often called “the guardians.”
One woman recently complimented another on a pin she was wearing, and the wearer explained it was for her daughter, a teacher killed at Sandy Hook. The first woman told a friend later that she went off and cried.
Story continued at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/n...-year-of-painful-daily-reminders.html?hp&_r=0
Last edited: