True faith in action

I grew up on the verges of Amish country; drive for a few miles in the right direction and you'd be seeing farms and dodging buggies. For a while, my mother drove directly to a Mennonite farm to buy produce from the family.

Although my own faith has been lost, I have immense respect for theirs - respect because it is so deep and so personal. The Amish do not evangelize. They do not write to the newspapers and the FCC and train doctors and pharmacists in attempts to impose it on everyone around them, nor do they say one thing and do another as so many of the televangelists do. They do not shield their children from the world of "The English;" a faith that is not freely chosen and held is of no use to them. And once it is chosen, it is lived in as much peace as possible with neighbors who sometimes treat them as exhibits in the zoo.

pouringsand says it best: Everyone wants to know what kind of people the Amish are, and I have just the thing to tell them... two funds have been set up by the Old Order Amish community to accept donations. One is the Nickel Mines Children's Fund. The other is the Roberts Family Fund, for the Children of the Roberts Family.

The Roberts Family is the family of the gunman.

I think that speaks volumes about what kind of people the Amish are.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has details on the Nickel Mines and the Roberts Family funds. Because the Amish do not have medical insurance and five of those little girls are still fighting for their lives, you can also donate to the Capitol Blue Cross fund that is being coordinated directly with the hospitals.

Book preview

If I keep enjoying this all the way through as much as I'm enjoying it now, I'll write a review of the last of the new Doctor Who tie-ins for the comms. Art of Destruction rated a "meh," and Price of Paradise a solid "eh," but by page 31 Nightmare of Black Island is downright promising.

It's a solid return to old school Who, from the alien gothic-horror plot to the classic "sinister noun of proper noun" title. And it's got some really great Doctor moments. Although there are bits that are specific to the Tenth Doctor (he's described as chewing on his glasses thoughtfully at one point... which, come to think of it, Tennant hasn't done, orally fixated as he is), Tucker has taken to heart the notion that the incarnations should be written as The Doctor and let the actor sort it out. As a consequence, I find this portrayal particularly "Doctorish" even if I'm occasionally hearing Eccleston's voice instead of Tennant's when the Doctor's piffling on.

Tucker really has the rhythm of a Who episode down:

[The Doctor] gave her a stern look. "It's not as all as you described it. Nothing like! Wrong number of arms for starters. We'll have to give you a few lessons in alien identification when we get back to the TARDIS."

"If we get back to the TARDIS, you mean. In case you hadn't noticed, that thing is looking at us as if we're lunch. Besides, it's not the wrong number of arms because that's not the thing I saw."

There was a shattering roar from behind them. The two of them spun to see another creature emerging from the shadows.

"THAT'S the one I saw," said Rose.

Could anything be more typically Whovian?

I am also amused to see that the BBC rules against not needing to purchase anything to follow a story line don't stop the show and the tie-ins from referring to each other. Rose talked about Justica (The Monsters Inside) on the show, while just before the ambush the Doctor was talking about New Earth.