Clarification

The recent murders in Leola, PA, were not committed by any members of the Amish community - I didn't mean to imply that.

The family that was murdered by another family member were from New York City - but I don't want to imply that New Yorkers are bad in any way, either.

I guess what I was saying was that no place is really safe ~ even rural areas with alot of the "Plain" people live see their share of violence.

I think that many people here in Pennsylvania think that we live in a safe state. And maybe somewhere there are statistics to support that - I don't know. (I know that statistics can be made to support anything, so I am sometimes suspicious of polls and stats.)

Back in 2001, many in our area felt surrounded by the bad news of the 9/11 attacks. Shanksville is to our west, Washington, D.C. just to our south, and New York is an easy train ride to our east. Because there are Navy and Army depots here, and the Three Mile Island nuclear plant is here, too, there were alerts, lock-downs and other security measures. (My husband couldn't leave the Navy base that day for many hours.) Everyone knew someone who lived and worked in the affected areas. And then our governor, Tom Ridge, was called upon to become the first Homeland Security chief.

Okay, I'm rambling here. I guess that I'm just kinda feeling like the big, bad world is getting too close sometimes. I'm keeping the television off.