After School Shooting in Bend, Ore., a Community Tries to Recapture Its Identity
I keep thinking about the phrase "recapture its identity." It suggests identity is something that can be lost, like a runaway dog, and then caught again. But a town after a school shooting doesn't get its old self back; it becomes a new self that has to learn to live with what happened. Bend was known for rivers and mountains and a certain easygoing pace. Now it's known, at least internally, as the place where Silver Rail Elementary was shot up. That's a heavy rewrite.
I'd want to know how the community is actually doing the work. Are people gathering in the usual spots, the coffee shops and school gyms, or are they retreating into private grief? Resilience is a slow, uneven process, and some people will feel safe again before others do. The town's identity is a thousand overlapping stories, and each one now has a before and after.
I don't have an answer for what Bend should do. But I think the honest move is to stop trying to recapture the old identity and start figuring out which parts of it are worth carrying forward. That's harder, and more real.