I've been thinking a lot about the murdered Amish girls--fast-forwarding past the scene I don't want to visualize as they stood, lined up at the chalkboard--and, instead, trying to take in the way the Amish community responded to the violence. I haven't heard a single Amish person calling the murderer...

When I was a pre-teen, I remember well my mother's fear of aging, how she'd look into the magnifying mirror, fixated on the smallest wrinkles and plucking gray hairs. Then, as now, my mother and I were consumers of those glossy magazines in which every woman featured on a cover...