Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Remember

"... that these dead shall not have died in vain."

About the only thing I left out in my brief polite presentation to the Amherst Select Board Monday night is how cowardly it is to simply pocket veto the question of allowing the commemorative flags to fly on 9/11 tomorrow, on the unlucky 13th anniversary of that devastating day.



A cowardice that flies in the face of the ultimate sacrifice paid by over 400 first responders who rushed headlong towards the stricken Twin Towers and the Pentagon when everyone else was rushing away.



AFD Central Station 9/11/13  (This year ceremony starts at 9:00 AM)

30 comments:

Dr. Ed said...

It has been publicly reported that entities of our government are concerned about what might possibly happen tomorrow. If they are right, would it not be ironic that the Amherst Selectboard was 2-for-2 in incredibly bad September 10th timing?

Anonymous said...

By using terms such as "cowardice" you have polarized this issue.

Larry Kelley said...

Takes one to know one, CAN.

Anonymous said...

Get over it. I thought you said last year that it was the last time you'd raise this (tired) issue.

Larry Kelley said...

Pay attention much? Last year I said I would stand down if the Select Board out it on the Spring ballot to allow the People of Amherst to decide the issue once and for all.

Anonymous said...

Larry, 9/11 seems to have affected you very deeply. Please don't take offense, but for those of us new to your journalism, did you have a personal connection behind your support for its annual commemoration?

Anonymous said...

anon 12:21

I'm guessing his personal connection is that he is an American.

Anonymous said...

The person behind you mocking you is very rude.

Dr. Ed said...

Please don't take offense, but for those of us new to your journalism, did you have a personal connection behind your support for its annual commemoration?

I can't speak for Larry, but I can speak for myself -- we were both at the infamous Selectboard meeting of September 10, 2001.

Like other communities, Amherst had left the flags up 24/7 on the light poles and some people liked that, and some people didn't. THAT topic had come to the Selectboard on that infamous night.

Jenny the Physics Professor and others had gone WAY over the edge in their opposition to the flags being flown -- I remember something along the lines of the flag was red to celebrate the blood of murdered peoples and white to celebrate white supremancy -- and a whole lot more that I instinctively |/dev/null for my own sanity.

I never intended to say what I did until I did -- you had to have been there -- but I made the point that the flags being flown showed that "Amherst was tolerant of everyone, including those of us who don't hate our country."

It was that much of a vile anti-American atmosphere in that room, and the Selectboard clearly was supportive of it. The Board decreed a list of holidays as the only days they would be permitted to fly.

The next morning, still reeling from that, and trying to get some work done (I was Housing Inspector for the AHA at the time), I didn't think much of a "two engine plane" hitting the WTC as the Empire State Building was once hit by a military plane, accidents happen.

I had work to do. And there were abnormalities in what I was hearing in the background, it seemed like there was more than one plane, there was mention of "by the helipad" and other stuff that I was kinda aware of but not processing as I had work to do.

There were mentions of Washington although I knew the crash had been in New York, another abnormality but I was writing letters citing violations and had to pay attention as it is rather embarrassing to get your CMR citations scrambled. I had work to do....

And then I suddenly realized that it had not only been a long time since I'd heard music on what was a music radio station, and then that I hadn't heard any commercials either. That was when the abnormalities stopped being abnormalities and I realized what was going on.

And in the context of still being upset about what I'd heard the prior night. That is when the issue of flying the flags, flying them all the time and not for just specific days became elevated to a completely different dimension.

I was invited to join the effort to "liberate" the flags and to put them back up -- I had to decline because I was a UMass student, which is also why I couldn't publicly support the effort -- although I wanted to do both.

For me, this is the issue...

Anonymous said...

Sickening..but we sure will fly the UN flag in front on town hall with no questions asked. UN-American if you ask me. Patriots understand, you freedom sucking lib-tard progressive socialists sure won't. Stay in your haven. You're welcome.

Walter Graff said...

Larry, tomorrow I'll be wearing the shirt of Manhattan Battalion 10 Engine Company 22, ladder 16 who lost nine men that day. I was at the site on 9/11 and spent the next three days on the pile. I know you won't let the faceless cowards words affect you. You fight a good fight. You have many supporters.

Anonymous said...

"freedom sucking lib-tard progressive socialists"

Yeah. Definitely the best way to win an argument is to sling mud at them and call them names. The only name I need to throw shade at your kind is... Republican.

Anonymous said...

Larry, tomorrow I will be wearing a tan shirt and blue pants. Just thought you should know.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:21 here again. Ed, thanks so much for the history on this. The connection between 9/11 and the Amherst flags was a mystery to me, as the reactions on both sides of the issue just seemed way out of proportion. Now I get it.

Larry Kelley said...

All you need to do is Google "Amherst, 9/11, flags" and you will get the (sad) picture.

Anonymous said...

There it is: Ed's narcissism and impotence in a nutshell.

A commenter asks Larry if he has a personal reason for continuing to advocate the flag issue... so Ed answers by telling us, at interminable length, why Ed feels so deeply, personally connected to the issue...

...yet not quite so deeply or personally that he could ever get off his ass to actually do something about it. He was far too busy being a student, after all! And now he's too busy doing... uh... um...

Ever wonder why no one exactly quakes in their boots at your endless threats to file a lawsuit or publish a tell-all book, Ed?

keithw said...

Anon 2:21

Make sure you tuck that tan shirt into those blue pants so no one sees that yellow stripe going up your back.

Larry Kelley said...

And I guarantee you Keith that he will not have the balls to come up to me face-to-face tomorrow morning in Amherst town center when I'm there for a rather extended period.

Anonymous said...

I can't never make it to the fire station cause I am always at work. But I am with you all in spirit.
I wish this town would stop this cause if you go to any other town you will see flags on the light poles in their towns, through the centers of those towns up just about all year long and up on 9/11. But no not in Amherst.

Life, death, tee-hee. said...

Who's the snickering chick in the background?


The new Mrs. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

maybe?


Tee-hee.



-Squeaky Squeaks

Dr. Ed said...

..yet not quite so deeply or personally that he could ever get off his ass to actually do something about it. He was far too busy being a student, after all!

No, Penis Breath, it's a little bit simpler than that. Javer Cevallos was the only Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs for whom I had any respect. I never anticipated that the left would decide to stop hating America (at lest for a few weeks) and I fully anticipated that UM would be called upon to punish me for my involvement in this.

That didn't bother me - what did was that Javer Cevallos is the one who would have to do it and that he would be the person whom I would have to sue personally in response and I didn't want to do that.

I doubt you can respect this Penis Breath, but I don't put people whom I respect into difficult situations.

And as to the book -- friends who are parents of teenagers have made the point to me that I should write that book a very different way, as a public service to people like them and their children.

I was leaning toward doing that, Penis Breath, but you challenge me and you might be responsible for a book that makes Upton Snclair's _Jungle_ look like an Amour promotional brochure by comparison.

Oh, and by the way, you don't want to know what that issue of the Minuteman would have looked like if I hadn't stopped some things from going into print.

Anonymous said...

I guess we can add paranoia...

"I fully anticipated that UM would be called upon to punish me"

...and delusions of grandeur...

"a book that makes Upton Snclair's _Jungle_ look like an Amour promotional brochure"

...to the list.

Just so we're clear, Ed, I am challenging you -- to come up with your next round of excuses. They're always so creative!

-PB

Dr. Ed said...

Just so we're clear, Ed, I am challenging you -- to come up with your next round of excuses.

I'm at a loss for words.

Maybe it isn't widely known how much "dirt" I have on the university, but exactly how is it unknown that UMass applies the Code of Student Conduct to the off-campus activities of students in the midst of a great outcry that UMass isn't doing so often enough?

Does that not inherently imply that UMass can do so? And don't you think I understood that they didn't particularly much like me?

Like I said, I'm at a loss for words...

Dr. Ed said...

Sickening..but we sure will fly the UN flag in front on town hall with no questions asked.

I will never forget the time some Committee On Something replaced the UN Flag with the Puerto Rican flag for some festive reason, which was duly publicized.

This clueless woman somehow mistakes it for the Texas flag, and then somehow presumes that it is being flown in honor of the then-President George W. Bush.

She takes it upon herself to take down the flag and then calls the Amherst Police who offer to "dispose of the item" for her, but she declines and says she will get rid of it herself.

The people who had put the Puerto Rican flag up subsequently notice the empty pole and report this to the police.

Somebody eventually realizes that this is the same flag and she returns it and everything is OK because it was a mistake. It was perfectly acceptable for her to steal the Texas flag, and an innocent mistake when she stole the Puerto Rico flag thinking it was the Texas flag, as long as she gives it back when she realizes she has stolen the wrong one.

Apparently theft is OK in Amherst, as long as it is of certain things...

Anonymous said...

No, Ed, I was challenging you to come up with a new set of excuses for not writing the expose you've been ranting about for years, the one that will destroy the university and turn Amherst into a ghost town.

I guess "I'm at a loss for words" is an appropriate excuse for not writing.

keithw said...

Larry, I'd be interested to find out which flag is flown in front of the town hall today. Anything other than the American Flag at half staff would be a slap in the face in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

At the 2:10 mark, that completely inappropriate gesture should have been called out by the mediator. How can they let someone sit directly behind our citizens and openly mock them?

Jackie M'Vemba said...

Tired issue?? Spoken like a true patriot. I suppose you're exhausted after 7 decades of Pearl Harbor commemorations as well. Or do you just hate America? Fly the flag!

Jackie M'Vemba said...

Hear, hear!

Anonymous said...

Lincoln was a Republican. He freed the slaves. What can u sling at that?