Keeping up with America

Flying high at the Bridgewater Municipal Complex

By any measure, our nation is one of the world’s most advanced and diverse countries, especially when taking into account the size of our population – 321 million – and the vastness of our geography.

We have become a paradoxical wonder of modern civilization. Nonetheless, times are troubling:  Tens of millions of us find ourselves in the midst of a fragile tension and a nascent social fragmentation that is straining the threads of the American fabric.

There is political gridlock and a cultural upheaval not seen in decades, one that is punctuated with seemingly unremitting chaos and violence in our inner cities with no apparent, workable solution in sight.

Unrealistically, local police forces are expected to establish order, maintain the peace and establish good community relations where endless teams of social scientists, advisors, and elected officials have failed.

“A Place to Remember . . .”

Photo Credit, Bergeron Images

The title of this post appears as the heading on a plaque affixed to a steel beam recovered after the World Trade Towers came crashing down fifteen years ago in New York City . . .

. . . “A tribute to life, lives lost and lives changed forever, September 11, 2001” is the accompanying sentiment. 

 

It is a day of infamy forever burnished into the American consciousness by a covert attack from a band of hate-filled Jihadists emanating in the Middle East.

This memorial stands in Dunham Park, in the Liberty Corner Section of Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Standing on that venerable, memory-filled steel beam are two American flags below which rests a fresh bouquet of flowers. 

 

Both were placed on the beam in memory of the innocent victims from this area of New Jersey who perished in that disgraceful attack.