West Valley Opinions, Sun Cities/Surprise Section, Page 2
EDITORIAL: OUR VIEW
SPIRITUAL CHRISTIAN MOLOKAN CEMETERY SEARCH
Some mysteries stay that way
University of Arizona graduate
student Kathy Powell carries
uses
a transponder at an old cemetery in Glendale.
This
GPR device is used by slowly dragging it along the
ground..
| More, bigger, better, faster:
It's the American way. In an age where devices can
diagnose disease, predict severe weather and balance our
checkbook, it's easy to think that science and
technology can clear up everything that ails us.
But there is only so much our discoveries can do. Two University of Arizona graduate students spent a recent morning canvassing a 1 2-acre Glendale cemetery to uncover mysteries hidden beneath its desert floor. Glendale Spiritual Christian Dukhizhiznik congregation Molokan Church hired them to find graves at the 90-year-old site. Dozens of people are buried there, but congregation church records do not exist are in complete, and several fires have destroyed some of the wooden grave markers. [See: High-tech search fails to uncover cemetery's secrets] The congregation church wanted to find the graves of children who died during the 1918 flu epidemic, but the high-tech radar equipment wasn't able to see through the soil's high clay content. How exciting it would be to piece together the area's history, not to mention locating all restore the graves of our ancestors. |
But the fruitless search
provides us with a good lesson: No matter how much we'd
like to solve every mystery and invent every cure, there
are unknowns in our lives that are just supposed to
remain unknowns.
There is no gadget that can conveniently solve age-old mysteries, and even if there were, maybe we really wouldn't want to know all the answers. Sometimes the mystery surrounding an event is the best part. Of course, curiosity often inspires invention, and attempting to understand the unknown often leads to great things. After all, if it weren't for those scientists who wanted to see the moon, we'd never have Velcro, astronaut ice cream and the Dustbuster vacuum. If science can't tell us about those buried at the Spiritual Christian Molokan cemetery, what is there to do? Let the past go and prevent future unmarked graves by affirming those most important in our lives. And understand that we don't need fancy tomb-stones to honor our departed loved ones — good works and stories do just fine. |
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