Tag: terrorism

A matter of perspective

A herd of of Holsteins making milk under the dinner oak.First impressions often are as much reflections of our own perspective as of the person we are evaluating.

After 20 years in the Navy, I matriculated into the University of Maine at Farmington, where I learned stuff and met a nice young woman who lived on a dairy farm with a husband heavy into Holstein husbandry, three daughters of which one actually enjoyed working in the barn, and a son who, after making sure Mommy was watching, reveled in walking atop tall picket fences, figuratively and literally.

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Remembering 9-11

Doing the job(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 9/13/2013)

I was crossing Baltimore Street on my way into the Adams County Courthouse when my phone buzzed. It was my spouse calling from work. A second plane had crashed into the Twin Towers.

When she called about the first one, I thought some pilot was going to be very glad he’d died for that mistake. But two was not a mistake.

“We’re at war with someone,” I said, then hung up and made my way to the emergency communications center in the courthouse basement, where I remained the rest of the day, watching an endless loop of passenger jets slicing into the two towers in lower Manhattan, and the towers collapsing on themselves, killing, at that time, untold thousands of office workers. Continue reading Remembering 9-11