Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Reich Marshal Hermann Göering testified, “Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along…. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
I prefer to read the newspapers and rarely watch TV. But on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was visiting family in Mount Savage, Md., watching the news of the World Trade Center attacks. Within a half hour of each other, both towers were reduced to rubble. By the end of the day, Tower 7 collapsed in the exact same manner.
Sitting before the TV, something kept nagging me.
I had lived in New York City for a number of years and knew those towers well, how close together the buildings really were. That you could hardly drop a shoebox between them is an overstatement, but apropos.
In his last years my father and his retired friends would play pinochle in his real estate office, a converted garage in a burb house in upstate New York. A few hands into the game, and the real estate banter turned into stories about their failing health. I would...
