Comeback kid -- Pediatrics, Christmas, Metra

Folks, this is one person's story, and a very touching, interesting one at that. All the negative posters should just take 2 seconds and try to imagine themselves in her place and try to learn something...about yourself, compassion and empathy.

Those who fault Rachel personally have absolutely NO concept of what the path to a super star music career is like. Especially in the Classical world. It doesn't get served to you on a silver platter. And don't judge her relationship with her family until you've lived in their house for a week (I haven't, but do know one family member). Nobody is perfect.

SAM wrote:

The telltale line in the article reavealing her selfishness and arrogance was her comment after playing in New Mexico:
"And she realizes that ensembles such as Santa Fe's, while impressive for such a small town, do nothing to promote the kind of top-rank, international career she once was close to achieving.
"I find it really good to play with an orchestra like this, and play for all these wonderful people," she says on the way to the airport. "But when I play with an orchestra on the next level, it's such a deeper experience, and I have this longing for that.""
They're not good enough for her... If she was good enough to play with the best she would be. But she's not.
She's a classic case of a child who's been told all her life that she's better than anyone else and whose parents sacrifice everything for them. She expanded --she didn't grow.
And now she's bitter because she's only one of many talented people but certainly not the best.

Very much like Dana Plato, who complained that no one would hire her in Hollywood once she was an adult. She worked in a laundromat and committed suicide in the end.

Mark wrote:

It's interesting that they didn't ask Mr. Fogel why the Chicago Symphony won't hire her. It's because she's a boring violinist. It's also because of her attitude and that of her husband. They are bitter, angry, not nice people. No one wants to work with them. I think that came through in the article. Has anyone ever heard someone so negative? Would you want to work with someone like that?
What happened to her was a tragedy. But she and her husband have milked this pity party for all its worth.
Don't we all wish we had a $15m fund to fall back on?
If she didn't want the story published she could have refused the interview.
She lives in a "modest 3 bedroom apartment downtown?" We all should be so lucky.
The relations with her various family tell the story. Why kind of person in agony from a terrible accident tells the hospital not to admit her father to her room? What kind of person after everything she has been through doesn't permit her own mother and sisters to attend her wedding?
These are some very messed up people. They need to be in therapy and carrying it out in a public forum is disgusting.

I have been wondering what has kept her from going to Europe to perform with the top dog orchestras? She constantly alludes to the fact that she wants to, but cannot perform with the creme de la creme. I guess I don't understand why she cannot - is it because she truly has a difficult personality, that she's indeed NOT the best of the best or is it that her physical disibility has kept her from doing so? I wonder..... Pearlman performed all over the world in his wheelchair and his disability. It didn't seem to stop him.
Despite the fact that the article was very well written, it tends to paint a relatively bleak picture of Rachel's personality and character. I don't believe anyone here is denying that her accident was terrible and that her recovery was/is equally as painful. I think it's more a question of what she values in life. Does she realize how fortunate she was to win $15-$30Mil in the settlement to pay for all of ther bills? Does she realize how lucky she was to find a man that is willing to completely define himself by her - cater to her every need - physically carry her, drive her, tend to her, travel everywhere with her? That's a really TOUGH find!!! Does she realize how lucky she is to have such a wonderful support system thru her sisters and her mother only to shun them...and that's after she almost died but was give a second chance as she put it? Does she realize how lucky she is to be alive and to have an upper body that remained unscathed by the terrible accident leaving her able to find peace and tranquility throught her biggest passion - playing the violin?

No Country For-- wrote:

<quoted text> What a smug, hateful and envious posting. You are of course free to voice your opinion, but what a vindictive soul you are.

Spare me the drama. My comment was not vindictive. If it was I would have stated that she deserved to be hurt, which I didn't. Oh, and thanks for letting me know that it's okay for me to post my opinion.
It would be terrible to be injured in the way she was, but I was left with the impression of extreme selfishness and arrogance when I was done reading the article based on her treatment of her family and her comment that I quoted about the New Mexico symphony to name two examples.
She was a child prodigy based on her countless hours of practice (an unusual trait in a child), but now she is one of many talented adults in a competitive field.
No one would want to be disfigured, but she also doesn't seem to count her blessings - that she's alive, has a loving husband, that she can continue to play and travel, and has a family who sacrificed for her during her recovery.

It is a testament to Barton's honesty that the family unhappiness was brought into this article. It was painful and poignant to read, but posters shouldn't pretend that their family lives are a Rockwell portrait. Trauma DOES do terrible things to a family dynamic, particularly one that was already fraught with troubles the rest of us can only guess at.

I'm sorry her family issues even made it into this story, as it only creates fodder for those who for private reasons of their own seem eager to tear her apart.

booksdates wrote:

and she didn't let the violin go why again?

Maybe you should read the story.

off key musical fart wrote:

Rachel is not an inspiration. She was foolish to not let go of the violin. Look at the 30,000 injured Iraq vets that are missing body parts but manage to work and win marathons. They did not sue the govt, american people, or terrorists for 30 milions. Like everyone else, I am sick of hearing about Rachel's story. Plus, she looks like she needs to work out more.
Damn good cellist....but a business owner

THIRTY THOUSAND vets missing body parts have run a marathon??? Wow, I had no idea!

booksdates wrote:

and she didn't let the violin go why again?

If you had actually read the article you would know what happened

I'll say it again. The negative posters are BITTER and JEALOUS. Someone said that when anonymous it is very easy to write nasty posts. Yes, I would agree.

Sad, very sad indeed.

disgusted wrote:

The only thing that made me even sicker to heart than finding out that even now 13 years later Rachel's physical injuries are still not healed, was opening up and readng this comments section and seeing the most truly ugly vicious stupid reprehensible comments ever uttered by some really sub-human examples of two legged walking slime bags.
I really hope that Rachel and all that care about her are smart enough to AVOID reading these comments.

I guarantee you that these same scumsuckers, who I note tend to post from places like "Mundelein" and "Oak Lawn" -- wherever the hell that is -- voted for George Bush. Gladly, too, I'd wager. Therefore these same scumsuckers are directly responsible for the deaths of 4,000 of our young men and women. They simply don't care about or value human life. Like all "conservatives".

"Borrow and Spend: "...who I note tend to post from places like "Mundelein" and "Oak Lawn"

You snob.
I am from Mundelein and I have huge compassion for Rachel and not that it is any of your business, but I am a highly democratic person. How dare you insult people who don't live in Wicker Park like you?
Idiot.

SAM wrote:

She's a classic case of a child who's been told all her life that she's better than anyone else and whose parents sacrifice everything for them. She expanded --she didn't grow.

Agreed. What happened to her was terrible, and she has my every sympathy for her pain and suffering, but she's got a lousy personality.

Her negativity is not inspiring at all. The way she cut off her family - her mother, who slept by her beside every night for months and months - is a disgrace. And to blame the accident for her career failure is not fair, either - as the critic quoted in the article said, if it weren't for her accident, she wouldn't even be this famous. She was stroked and coddled and told she was special all her life, and now that she's an adult in an adult world, she can't accept that she's simply not a world-class player, so she blames the accident.

You stay classy, Chicago.

Hey, booksdates,

Great attitude. Will you be my agent?

booksdates wrote:

<quoted text> Of course I have you fool. I'm in the business and she is on a cut from one of the acts that I handle. Average at best.

Dude, anyone who racks up those kind of international prizes is FAR from average. But maybe a two bit booking agent of wedding gigs isn't capable of seeing anything that is above average...

Good luck, Kiddo....we're all pulling for you!

The comments on here are breathtakingly mean, resentful, nasty, and dripping with evidence that the posters haven't even begun to read the story. What a horrible advertisement for Chicago. Let's hope this thread gets shut down and fast.

She was pinned to the train by a shoulder strap attached to a piece of luggage trapped in a door that should not have shut on her. She couldn't even wriggle free, much less let go. Can't you people read?

Aunty Suzy wrote:

Good luck, Kiddo....we're all pulling for you!

Wasn't the original amount in the lawsuit over a billion dollars? For some reason 19 billion sticks in my mind.

Ooops it was 600 million

Vaio wrote:

This woman sounds like she is suffering physically, but again, it is just like when she refused to let go of the violin.

Because you and many others seem not to have read the story...here are some quotes.

[QUOTE ]
Though she did not know it, she had become an enormous news story, the tale of a celebrated violin prodigy nearly killed because her instrument was trapped in a train flashed around the world. It soon morphed into the fiction of a violinist who sacrificed her life trying to save her violin.[/QUOTE]
Fiction, got it? She wasn't trying to save her violin. She was stuck and didn't know what was coming up.
[QUOTE ]
She decided that freeing herself was the better of two bleak options. So she "wormed" her fingers underneath the straps holding her left shoulder to the side of the train and gave them "one good shove." As the train pulled forward, the violinist spun away from it, her glasses flying through the air, her upper body buoyed to the right, her lower body swung to the left, placing her legs in the path of the train's remorseless metal wheels.[/QUOTE ]
When she realized what happened, she DID try to free herself!! She could not and faced an enormous accident. Accident, get it?
[QUOTE ]
"The moment I thought I was alone in the room, I would start panicking and I would go into shock," Barton recalls. So she insisted her mother sleep on a cot next to her for months to come. Whenever orderlies rolled her into an elevator to the operating room, "As soon as I saw a door closing, I would just start to scream and freak out," says Barton, who was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.[/QUOTE ]
She isn't recounting this to complain or be ungrateful of what she has. She is being open and honest about the trauma she went through.

[QUOTE ]When she had arrived at the emergency room, technicians had plunged an IV into the wrist of her left arm, a disaster because that's the hand with the fine-motor skills that articulates notes on the fiddle (the other arm moves the bow).[/QUOTE ] There were many points it sounds like that Rachel faced whether she would be able to continue the life she knew. How scary!
I can understand how painful all of this was for Rachel. For people to pick apart the story and say she shouldn't be complaining and others have had it worse, etc, etc... you look at your own self before you demand better from another human.