“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
For audio version click here The bluest skies of all were the ones from my boyhood in the country, but that time is gone, and right now, just a score of hours ago, the high hills above the Conversancy’s fields were showing the trees’ first colors of gold green and a rust red on the maples. Sitting in those sun drenched fields, I was happy to face the return of a cold wind strong enough to already shake […]
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For audio version click here I know what my mother saw and did on Tuesday evening, June 4, 1929. Twelve years old, she performed “a piano duet with Miss Rita Hartnett” as part of an elaborate celebration honoring the golden jubilee of the priesthood of the monsignor of St. Mary’s Parish in Lebanon. She heard the Boy Scouts of St. Mary’s, “captained by … the smallest Scout in the Troop,” sing Uncle Sammy. She watched […]
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For audio version click here I saw the dark shape first in the new green shoots in the meadow, but I had to come within 15 feet or so to understand that I was looking at a large snapping turtle laboriously crawling toward a goal unknown to me. From nose to the tip of the tail, he was 14 inches long, and his shell measured about 9″ across. Black, sulphurous mud covered his shell. Once […]
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For audio version click here What don’t State Police officers do in the course of a career? They see all facets of the human comedy and tragedy, in both its rural and urban phases. A day of patrol may sometimes be uneventful, but a career of intimate travel and encounters with every part of every tribe – that is a ticket to experiences that resonate. I wonder that my father’s deepening silence as he aged […]
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