Earlier today, we brought 230,000+ articles online under a new blog called Tucson Citizen Morgue, Part 2. Most of these articles have never been seen before on the web and come from an internal digital archive. There is some overlap with Tucson Citizen Morgue, Part 1. Part 1 contains photos, polls, slideshows, and more (shiny!). Part 2 is just text and the occasional hyperlink and bold/italic text (less shiny!).

I’m writing this post for those interested in the technical aspects of publishing a large archive of backdated content – particularly from the aspect of using WordPress. I was the primary person involved in the technical aspects of this deployment. Both archives are served through WordPress, so the challenges involved are fairly intense. There are approximately 350,000 articles spanning two WordPress blogs. So, the technology and time required is where things get interesting. Since bringing each set of content online was a similar process taking approximately the same amount of time, it would appear that the approach is a fairly universal solution for importing massive amounts of content into a CMS.

The first thing I did was to backup the content to be imported. The source databases and servers were/are going away, so I wanted to make sure I could reference a more permanent clone if the need arose in the future. You can never have too many backups anyway and hard drive space is cheap. Plus, referencing a local database ended up being a LOT faster than referencing rows across the network. It is also nice to know that you can freely lock the tables for increased performance.

The next thing I did was analyze existing blogs in our WordPress setup to learn how posts were stored and to understand what fields in the database did what. This didn’t take too long just because I had been messing around with WP tables directly for a while. The goal was to directly insert rows into the the database and make WordPress think it had inserted the rows into the database itself without using any WordPress functions. This is harder than it seems because of permalinks – getting those right outside of WordPress turns out to be quite difficult. An incorrect permalink calculation leads to a hard-to-diagnose HTTP 404 error.

After that, I started work on analyzing the data in the database. My primary goals here were to:

• Look for strange characters not in UTF-8 format – the target character set – and figure out how to deal with them.
• Figure out who wrote each article (i.e. the byline) and come up with a clean way to get them into the ‘wp_users’ table.
• Clean up rogue HTML.
• Import odd content such as slideshows (Part 1 only).
• Deal with “out of memory” issues.

That last one might come as a surprise until you learn that I was writing all the import scripts in PHP and occasionally hitting the configured memory limit of 128MB RAM. PHP tends to leak RAM like a sieve and will show its creaky side when it comes to medium-sized data processing projects. However, PHP has one of the best HTML cleanup libraries in existence (HTMLPurifier), which I needed in order to handle that third bullet point.

One of the most difficult things to do was figure out who wrote each article. WordPress uses the information for creating a link to all articles by that author and our stats show that users like clicking on those links, so being accurate here is pretty critical. String parsing is hard from a computer’s perspective and bylines ended up being a hodgepodge of strings mashed up with human error. We are talking over a decade of stories here – so human error creeps in pretty frequently. I wrote a special script to help me look at all the bylines and came up with a giant array of mappings that fixed all the bylines.

Fortunately, the main content of Morgue Part 1 was already in UTF-8 format for the most part with minor little issues with a few early entries that were easy enough to fix. Morgue, Part 2 was an entirely different story altogether. Some stories used UTF-8. Some stories used ISO-8859-1 (Windows). Some stories had Mac-Roman (the Tucson Citizen was a newspaper after all). And a bunch of them had mixed character sets – thanks to a character set “conversion” that happened years ago. Basically, a complete disaster. I ended up writing a special script that allowed me to, with a web browser, analyze “weird characters” and form a 500KB file to “fix” every last little character set issue. I’m pretty sure I got some things wrong. For example, baseball sports articles with “5[something] innings” ended up just turning into “5′ innings”. I’m pretty sure I also managed to get some things right. For instance, characters in French words for many food/restaurant review articles.

I ended up writing multiple import scripts to get the content into the format it is in today. The last stage was always the most painful – insert all the content into the database. As an example, the last stage script for Part 2 took approximately four hours to complete from start to finish. There is nothing more boring than watching a script run and run and run…. During the last stage, headlines and article bodies are parsed and cleaned up, permalinks calculated, tags and category determined, author(s) mapped, and everything finally inserted into the various tables all at one time – if the script died 2/3rds of the way through, I opted for fixing the problem and restarting from the beginning. For Part 1, polls, slideshows, and other content was transferred/imported too.

One interesting aspect about Part 1 was creating redirects for inbound links. If you find an old story online, it previously linked to a (mostly) broken article before Part 1 went online and search engines had a tough time figuring things out. Permalinks made for a tricky scenario – especially regarding performance, so a special database table was set up to map an old link to its correct WordPress-friendly permalink. When an inbound link comes in for an old story, a special script is run that determines exactly where to redirect and executes the redirect. From the user perspective, it happens instantaneously. From our perspective, we maintain our link equity with the major search engines.

Part 1 also taught us a few lesson about performance. First, important sections of the website run on a five-minute updated cron script. For example, the homepage pulls content from all of the blogs. This is actually cached content because calculating it in real-time is a very expensive operation. As soon as Part 1 came online, it caused the cron scripts to enter into an infinite loop (take too long) and caused the server to crash – whoops! So we now exclude really large blogs from being considered for most processing.

The performance of Part 1 introduced us to some significant show-stopper problems and set back the launch date for Part 2. Part 1 only had 120,000 articles in it, but it severely impacted the server. We have learned that WordPress starts to be unable to handle the load when a blog contains more than 15,000 posts. I am fairly confident we are the only website in existence with a single WordPress blog exceeding 100,000 posts. So, for the longest time we were up against a severe technical hurdle. When Giffords was shot, the Tucson Citizen went down hard. And “blog 106″ (aka /morgue/) was the culprit because suddenly everyone was searching for Giffords-related articles, which took them to the Morgue, Part 1 blog. Taking that blog offline for a few days alleviated the situation and allowed visitors to view the rest of the site – sort of…the site was up and down over the next few days anyway but the entire site was permanently offline when Part 1 was available. This problem happened even though the site was caching content. We’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how good the caching scheme is if there is a blog with more than 15,000 posts in it that huge numbers of visitors are requesting.

So, what we discovered was a major scaling issue. We don’t really have the money for multiple servers but I managed to, after pulling many teeth and being rather annoying, get IT to get me one more server for use as an “emergency backup server” and for testing purposes. The backup server isn’t as nice as the fancy-schmancy Intel Xeon Quad Core with oodles of RAM the main server has, but we can theoretically bring our backup server online and live in about 15 minutes of a total failure of this server. Anyway, I digress. Back to the scaling issue:

There are some interesting aspects about these two blogs that I eventually realized that we can exploit. First, they are archive content blogs. They will never have another post or anything else done with them ever again. Maybe. Part 1 is missing video due to a power surge that fried the video server before we got to extracting that content BUT the videos do still theoretically exist on backup DVDs – recovering that content is a separate project. Anyway, for the moment, the blogs are static content that are “read-only” (i.e. no comments allowed).

WordPress.com is the largest installed user of WordPress. They have a massive server farm and use a little-known plugin called HyperDB that spans database requests across multiple servers to help alleviate the performance issues of WordPress. There are very few users of HyperDB and all of them have scalability issues with WordPress, so support is very limited. It took a while and fiddling, but I eventually figured out how to abuse our backup server’s MySQL database for use as the primary SQL query engine for both Morgue blogs. Basically, HyperDB determines if the request is for one of those two blogs and then uses the backup server database to handle the request on a read-only basis. A perfect fit for these two blogs. So, if another Giffords-like event happens (hopefully nothing like it happens again!), the main server has a better chance of not going down due to two large blogs. It will also be nice to have the “slow MySQL query log” on the main server be free of notifications about these blogs.

This has been an unfortunate past few weeks regarding our website and keeping files around. This is the second time we’ve lost our files/photos and had to dig into backups to restore the site to proper functionality. We probably lost some files again but the loss was during a time when most of the bloggers weren’t doing much blogging.

Last night, one of our own connected to a public WiFi network and used their site admin (aka ‘WP Super Admin’) login to do some blogging on the site. Somewhere along the line, the computer became infected with a rootkit and probably other malware but that person kept on working despite the computer acting strange. Shortly around the same time as the infection, massive numbers of photos were deleted from the site across most blogs. I got a wonderful phone call from Mark this morning and we spent a few hours figuring out the situation and how this happened.

Measures are also being taken to prevent any significant losses from happening again in the future. We’ve improved our backup strategy so that we only lose about one hour’s worth of files rather than 12+ hours. Still not perfect, but better than what we were doing previously. We are also working out a better strategy for site admin account usage so we can keep the site secure when site admin credentials are used off-site.

If you’re wondering why many TucsonCitizen.com articles today don’t have photos in them, it’s because early yesterday evening, malicious gremlins of unknown source and quantity entered TucsonCitizen.com and deleted numerous photo databases.

We will restore the photos from a backup shortly.

Meanwhile, said gremlins are running for their lives as an army of angry human programmers pursues them with vengeance.

UPDATE: Nasty gremlins have been found and destroyed. Photos are back. Long live the humans!!

Earlier today, the Tucson Citizen blog went down and we lost today’s photos. This was my fault – oops! Total downtime was a little over an hour. It is mostly restored now as I write this.

How this happened: Mark Evans pointed out a problem with a new blog that didn’t have any of the proper plugins loaded and I decided that the simplest way would be to disable the sitewide plugins and then re-enable them (just in case other blogs had a similar issue). Everything worked great until I attempted to disable our caching plugin. Apparently, deactivating that specific plugin causes files to be deleted. I have no idea why. The result of this disaster was a whopping 137,000+ deleted blog files (approximately 11GB) plus a White Screen Of Death (WSOD).

Fortunately, we keep really good backups (i.e. two mostly complete site backups), so very little was lost. Specifically, if you are a Tucson Citizen blogger, you lost any photo you posted after 1 a.m. this morning and will have to re-upload it. One backup is being left turned off until tomorrow just in case something else went horribly wrong that we don’t know about yet so that we can still recover from this. If you spot a problem that wasn’t there before, please let Mark Evans know.

Needless to say, the blog that had the problem still has the same problem. My “fix” didn’t fix it. Sigh.

On a positive note, this has been an actual, real-world test of our website backups. Not that anyone should ever have to find out if their backups actually work. But everyone here is very glad that they do work.

We are happy to announce the start of the TucsonCitizen.com Summer Ticket Giveaway in generous partnership with the Tucson Padres. Every two weeks this summer, TucsonCitizen.com will randomly select two people from among our Facebook fans to win general admission vouchers to see the Tucson Padres. The vouchers can be used for entry to any home game, with a few exceptions. The vouchers can’t be used for San Diego Padres exhibition games or games for which the entry price has been raised because of a concert. The details can be found on the vouchers and the schedule.

The good news is that all you have to do to win is hit the Like button at the top of the TucsonCitizen.com Facebook page and be reachable through Facebook. We will contact you only to let you know that you’ve won. Then we’ll mail you the vouchers or arrange for you to pick them up.

Don’t forget to let your friends know about the contest and TucsonCitizen.com, the Voice of Tucson. And while you’re on Facebook, take the time to hit the “Like” button on the Padres Facebook page and the TucsonCitizen.com Sports Network page, as well.

Winners

AaSam Dee

Kenneth Whirley

Melissa Garcia

Chris Tapia

Richard West

Tonia Ammon

Marysol Urbina

Florentino Camacho Jr.

Tobias Frent

David Jonathas

Melissa Donovan

Norma Basurto Marquez

Ben Quick

The effort underway to stabilize the website and make room for more growth continues. Several of the bloggers have noticed issues, particularly with commenting, and those have been fixed for the most part. On the upside, we have made vast improvements to overall site performance. Between WP Super Cache and APC, we’ve seen a huge drop in CPU and RAM utilization as well as the number of connections to MySQL.

What this means for most users: Retrieving a page from the server is faster than before.

CPU usage before and after installing APC.

Even though the improvements made thus far have been significant, there are even more optimizations that can and will likely be made over the coming weeks and months.

On an unrelated side note, bloggers can now comment through the administration interface without having to approve their own comments.

Hello from your local computer nerd here at TNI. As you can tell, we’ve mostly returned to normal now that the amount of traffic to site has also decreased a bit. However, we are still working to improve the load on this poor server that had to endure all sorts of problems this past week. Bloggers feel the most pain whenever the server goes down because they can’t get to the site to post. Mark is unhappy whenever that happens too because that means you can’t view the site and his page views go down. We’re all a bit frustrated about the situation, but the reality is: WordPress is a resource hog.

Here is a picture showing the server load during the past week:

CPU usage during the week of the shooting.

Simply put, as soon as the word was out about the shooting, this site went down. A friend told me about the shooting and, literally 30 seconds later, I got a phone call from Mark saying the site was inaccessible. A couple months ago we discovered that any time the box hits 100% CPU, it generally can’t keep up with the requests and ends up falling all over itself – even after the connections to the server have long been terminated. The only “solution” so far is to reboot the machine. We went down at least 60 times the first day alone. Having more users than a server can handle is supposedly a good problem to have. But not if someone has to camp out next to the restart button. And that someone is usually Mark. He gets grumpy when he has to do that. Understandable because going into work on a weekend is no fun.

Obviously, rebooting the machine is not a solution. Rebooting only temporarily covers up the real problem. At the end of last week, we finally got another server set up to run tests on.

The machine the Citizen website currently runs on is no slouch. It is a Dual-Core Intel Xeon @ 2.66 GHz (4 cores) with 4MB L2 cache per processor (8MB total), 10GB RAM, bus speed is 1.33GHz, and a little under 1TB hard drive space in some RAID configuration. The test machine is slightly less impressive in some ways, more in others.

At any rate, the site runs at 60% CPU utilization – on average. For the moment. The goal over the next couple of weeks is to get that down to something smaller. Mark wants to grow the site but the current setup clearly can’t handle too much more growth. The first thing we did after getting the test server up was install a better WordPress caching plugin on the test server, made sure it worked, pushed it to the live server, and then dealt with the minor fallout from that. Nothing appears to have changed on the CPU utilization front, which is a disappointment, but the plugin probably helps significantly whenever there is a large influx of visitors. We have noticed a drop in the number of connections to MySQL, which does help things a bit.

APC, eAccelerator, or another PHP opcode cache is now at the top of our list to get CPU utilization down. We’ve held off on trying this because we didn’t have a test server to use. Opcode caches for PHP are invasive bits of software that have to be custom-built but supposedly increase PHP’s performance significantly.

After that, who knows what we’ll try. For better or worse, we’re stuck with WordPress for various reasons. So it boils down to fixing the system itself to better handle the load. Now that we’ve got another box, we can finally try some new things we’ve been wanting to try. To summarize: We’re trying to make the experience of loading pages faster for everyone.

We’ll monitor the local reaction from various media sources, blogs and Twitter feeds from tonight’s “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America” memorial service at McKale Center. TucsonCitizen.com’s Carli Brosseau is among the press corps and you can see her tweets on the left side of this page.

On Twitter, the official hashtag is #obamatuc.

The university reports that attendance for the memorial service is 26,172 — 13,172 at McKale Center and 13,000 at Arizona Stadium.

* * *

There are reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz were in the hospital room this afternoon when Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes. Gillibrand was quoted on CNN as saying, “It was like witnessing a miracle.”

* * *

Tweet from someone calling herself The Carie: I cried a whole lot. A whole lot. And if you’re new to tucson, you ought to know we love clapping.

* * *

The memorial service ends. With the cheering of those in attendance, it sometimes had the feel of a rally, not a memorial, but it was also a time to celebrate those who acted bravely and swiftly and wisely on Saturday and beyond.

No ovation lifted the spirits more than President Obama’s news that U.S. Congressman Gabrielle Giffords, recovering from a gunshot to the head, opened her eyes today for the first time.

You can see that those comments were not in the original text of his speech.

Some of the final words from President Obama: “The forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

* * *

7:16 p.m.: Obama on Christina Taylor Green: “I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”

7:11 p.m.: Obama: “If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.”

* * *

6:55 p.m.: Obama talking about visiting Gabrielle Giffords at UMC, delivers happy news: “A few minutes after we left her room, and some of her colleagues from Congress were in the room, Gabby opened her eyes for the first time. Gabby opened her eyes for the first time. … I can tell you she knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows we are rooting for her through what undoubtedly will be a difficult journey. We are there for her.”

6:45 p.m.: Obama’s opening words: “I have come here tonight as an American, who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today and will stand by you tomorrow.”

* * *

The Tucson Weekly has posted quotes from those in attendance at the ceremony:

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik on Judge Roll: “He was one of the finest human beings I ever met and the epitome of what judges ought to be,” Dupnik said. “Every judge should take a look at him.”

* * *

6:33 p.m.: Gov. Brewer: “This state, bound together by prayer and action and hope and faith, will not be shredded by one madman’s act of darkness.”

Daniel Hernandez, credited with saving the life of Gabrielle Giffords rejects being called a hero, says the real heroes are the people who dedicate their lives to public service.

* * *

From earlier, posted via the Desert Lamp:

Tucson and area first responders sit in the front row of McKale Center, awaiting President Obama's address.

6:21 p.m.: Standing ovation for Daniel Hernandez at McKale. What must that feel like to have the President standing next to you, clapping for you?

6:17 p.m.: University of Arizona president Robert Shelton: “We’re here to try to bring comfort to those whose lives have been forever changed by an act that is heinous that it is almost impossible to comprehend.”

* * *

Here is a timeline of President Obama’s visit before heading to McKale Center (information from the White House press office):

All information below per Robert Gibbs.
The president and Mrs. Obama spent about 45 minutes at the hospital. They visited a total of five patients who were victims of Saturday’s attack, including Rep. Giffords and two of her staffers, Ron Barber and Pam Simon, plus two others who were not identified.

They were led on the tour by Dr. Peter Rhee. A White House physician was part of the advance team for the hospital. A breakdown of the hospital tour follows, below.

We arrived at the McKale Center at just before 5 p.m. POTUS and FLOTUS are meeting privately with 13 people who are family members of the deceased. With them are AG Holder, Sens. McCain and Kyl, and Rep. Barrasso. They may be meeting with other family members after this group.

Here is the breakdown of their visit (all times local):
4:06 to 4:07 p.m.: They arrive on the ICU, on the second floor of the hospital and greet doctors, nurses and staff near Giffords’ room

4:07 to 4:16 p.m.: They visit with Giffords and her husband. He said he had no information on her condition or whether she was able to participate in the visit.

4:16 to 4:21 p.m. They visit with patient #2 (he did not say whether this was one of the staffers or one of the unidentified patients)

4:22 to 4:23 p.m. They greeted doctors, nurses and staff

4:23 to 4:28 p.m. They visit with patient #3

4:28 to 4:36 p.m. They walk through hospital and greet personnel and take several photos

4:36 to 4:39 p.m. They visit with patient #4

4:39 to 4:40 p.m. They greet doctors, nurses and staff

4:40 to 4:45 p.m. They visit with patient #5

4:45 to 4:49 p.m. They walk through the hospital, shaking hands, and go to the first floor

4:49 to 4:51 p.m. They meet with about 20 people on the trauma team that received the victims on Saturday.

* * *

6:01 p.m.: The President and First Lady walk in to McKale Center as the crowd eruptsa. President Obama is standing next to Gabrielle Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez.

* * *

T-shirts handed out at McKale with the “Together We Thrive” slogan.

* * *

5:55 p.m.: KOLD Channel 13 reporters wearing yellow ribbons as a symbol of the community coming together, according to anchor Heather Rowe.

* * *

From the Huffington Post, previewing President Obama’s speech:

Searching for the right tone in the evening service, Obama aimed to console the country, not dissect its politics. In talking of those shot and killed, Obama will “reflect on how all of us might best honor their memory in our own lives,” his spokesman said.

The president was expected to speak for about 15 minutes. A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers accompanied him on Air Force One in a sign of solidarity.

5:41 p.m.: Tweet from FoxNews11: Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is in the McKale crowd.

5:39 p.m.: Photo of Arizona Stadium from Keith Lajoie via Twitter:

* * *

Mayor Bob Walkup, in a taped piece on CNN, talks about what President Obama can provide tonight.

“It helps in the healing process. I know he knows Tucson is a great community. One of the things today is all about the healing process, praying for those who are still in the healing process and remembering those who lost their lives, but it is also about tomorrow.”

5:22 p.m.: Tom Duddleston of the Arizona athletic department says McKale just closed. Overflow crowd being told to go to Arizona Stadium, where service will shown on videoboard.

5:14 p.m. Tweet from Tucson Weekly: Dr. Lemole and Dr. Rhee are receiving spontaneous rounds of applause in McKale

5:05 p.m.: Tweet from FoxNews11: White House says the President spent nine minutes with Rep. #Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly at UMC.

TucsonCitizen.com staff and its many bloggers will be posting updates and commentary of the University of Arizona’s  “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America” this evening as well as the other public memorials and funerals this week.

Social Media Editor Carli Brosseau will be among the press corps covering the UA event and President Obama’s visit. She will be live blogging the event via Twitter @TucsonCitizen with her Twitter feed redirected to this post via RSS.

Site administrators Anthony Gimino and Mark B. Evans will be posting coverage from the Arizona Republic and links from other media and local and national blogs covering the event.

Several TucsonCitizen.com bloggers are attempting to attend the UA memorial and will either make it inside McKale or be redirected to the Arizona Stadium overflow area. They will offer their perspective on various speakers’ comments and post reaction from the crowd.

So bookmark this page and return here frequently for the latest on this historic night honoring the dead, the injured and the spirit of community that is enveloping Tucson.

Text of President’s speech:

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
At a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona
University of Arizona, McKale Memorial Center
Tucson, Arizona
January 12, 2011

As Prepared for Delivery—

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona:  I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.  But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight.  We mourn with you for the fallen.  We join you in your grief.  And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech.  They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation’s capital.  Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets.  And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years.  A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge.  His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit.  He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his Representative.  John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons, and his five grandchildren.

George and Dorothy Morris – “Dot” to her friends – were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters.  They did everything together, traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon.  Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their Congresswoman had to say.  When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife.  Both were shot.  Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter.  A gifted quilter, she’d often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered.  A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago. They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy’s daughters put it, “be boyfriend and girlfriend again.” When they weren’t out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ.  A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux.  His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.

Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was people.  As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks.  He died doing what he loved – talking with people and seeing how he could help.  Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.

And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green.  Christina was an A student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer.  She often proclaimed that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her.  She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, “We are so blessed.  We have the best life.”  And she’d pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing.  Our hearts are broken – and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.

Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday.  I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak.  And I can tell you this – she knows we’re here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.

And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others.  We are grateful for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby’s office who ran through the chaos to minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive.  We are grateful for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload.  We are grateful for a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer’s ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives.  And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle.  They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength.  Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday morning.

Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us.  It raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward.  How can we honor the fallen?  How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless.  Already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems.  Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding.  In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.”  Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack.  None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy.  We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.  As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.  Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that’s what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected.  We’re shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward.  We reflect on the past.   Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder.  Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us?  Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us.  We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives.  Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order.  We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.  For those who were harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong.  We may not have known them personally, but we surely see ourselves in them.  In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners.  Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son.  In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law.  In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christinain Christina we see all of our children.  So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example.  If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.  Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents.  And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.  It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better.  Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe.  We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.  I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed.  Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.  She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful.  She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model.  She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations.  I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.  All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.”  On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life.  “I hope you help those in need,” read one.  “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart.  I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today.  And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace.  May He love and watch over the survivors.  And may He bless the United States of America.

Stories from the Arizona Republic about UA Memorial and Obama:
USA Today’s Live coverage
President Obama’s speech to remember victims, soothe nation
Obama visits Giffords at hospital, leaves for speech on campus <
Thousands line up for Arizona memorial, Obama speech
Arizona Republic’s Live Feed of its reporter’s and photographer’s coverage

As many of our visitors may have noticed, TucsonCitizen.com has been down frequently since shortly after the shooting yesterday morning. Our web server has been unable to handle the hundreds of thousands of queries to its database every minute and keeps resetting itself.

We continue to update the story on Facebook and Twitter and you can check in there or continue to attempt to check in here. You can also follow the Arizona Republic’s excellent coverage of the tragedy here.

We apologize for the inconvenience but a solution is not immediately available.

Mark B. Evans
Administrator/Editor
TucsonCitizen.com