On Frontline: Raising Adam Lanza. See also this story from the Hartford Courant.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 6
Thanks for the reminder. I forgot all about Rachel Maddow's Hubris documentary last night, and it appears MSNBC doesn't repeat shows, a la PBS. I'll have to find it online, but at least I'll get the Frontline show.
It’s online. We’ve taken to catching more and more shows online, but I’m watching Frontline tonight.
I left a comment and it got eaten by Blogger. I said it just right...and I don't have the energy to try and recreate it.
I heard a PBS preview of this broadcast. It does not sound like anything definitive was said. Every parent knows it is easier to be the parent of the victim than the parent of the perpetrator--even if it's a playground handful of sand in the face.
Even in minor flurries, a parent wonders where he/she went wrong, what might have been done, what was overlooked. Every parent should have the humility to realize that, 'There, but for the grace of God [or luck], go I.'
I can't think of a word that encompasses what I feel about the appetite for raking over the bones of a murdered woman--who might, in fact, have been killed by a son's twisted desire to spare her the reaction to his planned attack. In vain, it would appear.
I just watched the episode and didn’t see anything close to raking over the bones of a murdered woman. What I saw was the work of two reporters trying to learn something about the most important — and it seems only — relationship in Adam Lanza’s life. Nancy Lanza was characterized as a victim of her son’s violence and as someone devoted to him and trying to steer him toward some sort of future. Several people in the film spoke of her as making what turned out to be catastrophic choices — encouraging her son to shoot and keeping weapons in the house without locking them up. There was also a clear statement that nothing in a diagnosis of Asperger’s would point to what happened in Newtown.
I can’t imagine how it could be easier to be the parent of a victim in these or any circumstances — I don’t know how to quantify or compare such suffering.
It isn't like you to so misread what I was saying, so perhaps it is that I expressed it poorly (having lost a post I was satisfied with) on rewriting.
One thing may be easier than another, even in the context of horrific tragedy.
A few weeks after our daughter's near-death (she was resuscitated, and emergency heart surgery at age 5 days saved her) a student at the HS where I taught received a car on the occasion of his 16th birthday. He took three friends for a drive...and was killed in a serious accident. As devastated as we were by our experience, all I could think was how much more dreadful it would be to lose a child after investing 16 *years* of love, care, and effort.
I meant literally what I said at the end — that I can’t understand how to evaluate or weigh suffering in that way. I think I’ve been influenced by reading about Vietnam veterans and the futility of comparing one’s suffering in war to that of others — who had it better or worse. But I don’t doubt that it’s easier to be reconciled to some circumstances than others.
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