Today’s edition of The Berkshire Eagle, our hometown daily paper, carried the following editorial, headed “Vietnam reverberates half a century later”:

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On Memorial Day, when we remember all those who died while serving in the country’s armed forces, the Vietnam War has particular resonance. Fifty years ago, a war that had been simmering in the public consciousness fully exploded, with consequences both societal and political. The aftershocks are still being felt half a century later.

Nearly 15,000 Americans died in Vietnam in 1968, a 57 percent increase over 1967, and an increasingly rebellious press and public questioned the rationale for the war and the reliability of what they were being told about the war by the political and military hierarchy. 1968 was also the year of the Tet offensive, a coordinated wave of assaults launched by North Vietnam. While nominally a victory for the United States and its South Vietnam allies, the ferocity of the attack shattered the illusion created by the hierarchy that the war was being won and would soon be over. It would not be over soon, and victory was far from assured.

In March of this year, the 27 Berkshire County veterans who died in Vietnam were honored at an event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 65. One of those soldiers, Paul Cronk Jr. of Ashley Falls, received the Medal of Liberty this past Thursday in a ceremony on the campus of Mount Everett High School in Sheffield (Eagle, May 26.) The U.S. Army specialist fourth class was killed in action in late 1967 in the Battle of Dak To.

Bob Cronk, A Navy veteran who was presented his older brother’s medal at the ceremony, observed that the 1958 Thunderbird that Paul Jr. was restoring when he left for Vietnam remains parked in his driveway 50 years later. Those who died in Vietnam had lives that were frozen in time when they were lost on the battlefield. And those lives remain fresh in the memory of those they left behind, in part because of the objects, like a partly restored Thunderbird, that remain to represent them.

The reaction of Americans to returning veterans was complicated by growing opposition to the war. Those who went to Vietnam were criticized as enablers of the misguided policies of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Army Commander William Westmoreland and many others. The My Lai massacre of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in 1968 tarred all troops by implication. Vets came to home to criticism or were simply ignored, and have only in recent years been accorded recognition, including assistance in dealing with the physical and psychological wounds of war they brought home with them.

The lessons of Vietnam were many, and perhaps foremost among them were that wars should be fought only as a last resort, and never under false pretenses. The Iraq War under President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney showed that those lessons went unlearned — or were cynically ignored. As in Vietnam, politics tainted the rationale for war, and the public was lied to as that rationale crumbled among bloodshed and chaos. Those who fought bravely in Iraq, and in the ongoing war in Afghanistan as well, merit respect regardless of the failings of the politicians and the military brass. Those who have died in those wars deserve the honors accorded those who gave their lives in all of the nation’s wars through its history.

Going forward, we hope the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq have finally been learned by all Americans, and by the elected and appointed officials charged with waging war, or with finding diplomatic solutions to avoid war. Learning and applying those lessons is a ideal way to pay tribute to our veterans — those who returned from the battlefields and those who did not.

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To access the Eagle’s editorial and op-ed pages, go to http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ and select “Opinion.”

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Why the Eagle? It’s based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where we — Bruce Henry and Mark Miller — live and where we boarded one of two buses on April 12 to get us most of the way to Provincetown on Cape Cod, where the next morning we began walking toward westward to the New York State line. More detail on the walk will follow in future entries, as well as relevant entries not specifically on the walk or on the mass murders of September 11, 2001.

— Mark

. . . from near the beginning of “Demolition of Truth: Psychologists Examine 9/11,” a documentary produced a year or so ago and available in DVD through Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

“The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.” — Rollo May, American existential psychologist

“Fifteen years have passed. . . . There is substantial NEW evidence that the government didn’t address in their 9/11 reports . . . and hasn’t acknowledged since. Why has public debate become taboo?” — William Woodward, PhD, experimental psychologist

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Note: Activity on this blog will pick up. Although we — Bruce Henry and Mark Miller — completed our walk from Provincetown on Cape Cod to the New York State line, there is much to be said about it that is not boring. We learned a lot that we didn’t get down in pixels here and will make up for it.

— Mark

. . . in a play to be performed off-Broadway.

This just in from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:

“It may have taken almost 17 years, but the truth about what happened in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, is finally finding its way onto the New York City stage.

“A Blanket of Dust, a new play by Richard Squires, will run from June 6th until June 30th at the Flea Theater, just blocks away from where the tragic events depicted in the play actually took place.

“The play tells the story of Diane Crane, a modern-day Antigone and U.S. Senator’s daughter, whose husband is killed in the attacks. Diane rushes to the scene and stands helplessly in the dust of the fallen Twin Towers as she watches the stunning collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.

“Her skepticism of the quickly forming official narrative, born instantly from her visceral experience of the destruction, launches her on a quest for justice that drives her to the outer fringes of society and leads ultimately to a harrowing act of sacrificial tragedy.

“Learn more about this trailblazing theatrical production and purchase your tickets now at ABlankeofDust.com. Also, hear what 9/11 family member Bob McIlvaine has to say about the play. We’ll see you at the theater!

“On the morning of 9/11, Diana Crane, the daughter of a ranking US Senator, gets a farewell phone call from her husband trapped in Tower 1, just as it collapses. She is tortured by the evidence that the Towers seemed to fall identically, with their remains suggesting they were intentionally demolished.

“Follow Diana as she pursues the most powerful people in Washington for answers to her husband’s death, only to learn that the government for the people, by the people, . . . may not actually be for the people.”

— Mark

It’s approaching 6 p.m. without an entry specifically about the walk having been written, so here is another excerpt from Melanie Challenger’s article, “Fear Itself,” in the latest issue of Orion:

“Most animals tend to fear what they’re justified in fearing. But if you can think about fear, you can distort or invent it. In one of the many strange reversals in our seminatural world, humans have somehow managed to make being afraid more important than whether or not there’s any reason to be so.”

The whole article may be found at https://orionmagazine.org/article/fear-itself/ .

— Mark

New York State and Massachusetts are divided by a line of low hills running roughly north-south, the Taconic Range. U.S. Route 20 traverses a gap in them and the actual NYS-MA border at US20 runs close to the ridge on the west slope. On Monday, May 14, Mark and I walked up and over the gap to the state line, thus completing the trans-Massachusetts 9/11 Truth Walk.

True to form, on the final leg we were stopped twice by curious motorists: first by young Brady Hanford who lives hard by Hancock Shaker Village right on US20; later by videographer Jason Velazquez, who interviewed us with his smartphone for a blog post or a podcast on The Greylock Glass. Before Velazquez we were passed by two friends,Christopher Gruener and Al Magaletta from Boston 9/11 Truth, who wanted to witness the end of the walk and were driving ahead to the border. My wife Ellen Gillespie and Velazquez also met us there.

Ample photographs and videos were recorded on smart phones. An agreeable surprise was a bottle of Brut (like Champagne) brought by Al and Chris, duly quaffed at the state line.

Walk completed, documented (endpoint), and celebrated, and Al and Chisneeding to get back to eastern Mass, a Honda Civic and a Toyota Prius Cwith a total of five people headed a few miles east. Velazguez headed elsewhere.

The party stopped for a hearty lunch at Hancock Shaker Village then split in the HSV parking lot; Al and Chris bound for Boston and north; Mark, Bruce, and Ellen to Pittsfield and home, agreeing to meet anon to discuss how to follow up The Walk.

— Bruce H.

Orion, an increasingly known magazine published Great Barrington here in Berkshire County, concentrates “on nature, the environment, and culture, addressing environmental and social issues,” according to its official website.

The latest issue carries a long article by Melanie Challenger entitled “Fear Itself.” Here’s  a passage from it:

“When there is a well of anxiety under the surface of human life, the stories we tell matter deeply because, when it comes to our fears, we have always been poor storytellers of fact. Stories occupy the working core of our outlook and rationality. We can tell stories that trigger our biases or we can tell stories that steady our arm.”

The whole article is at https://orionmagazine.org/article/fear-itself/ . With permission from the people at Orion, we may cite other passages in “Fear Itself” in the future.

— Mark

We had decided arbitrarily (but not without tacit approval by spouses) to telephone home for pickup daily once we had crossed the Connecticut River.

Wanting to visit Olive Branch Press in Northampton, publisher of David Ray Griffin’s 9/11 books, we stayed an extra night at a motel in Hadley in order to cross the river into Hamp on a weekday, Monday May 07. Arriving after 9:00 AM, we found the Olive Branch warehouse not yet open.

Proceding through “metro” Northampton we visited a bookstore in Thornes Marketplace (formerly a department store), which had two copies of DRG’s latest opus.

Outside, we spoke in succession to: 1) octogenarian who was not too sure but generally with us, then 2) college freshman or sophomore Ethan on the same page as we, who estimated 40% to 60% of his age cohort think likewise.

Moving uphill out of Northampton, we gained the village of Florence and stopped for lunch at the Miss Florence Diner, where a pair of workers in another booth indicated approval of our signs and a “Why the Truth about 9/11 Still Matters” folder and thanked us.

On into the Leeds section of Williamsburg … where a woman from a hilltown further west approached us, apparently starved for 9/11 conversation. We jawed with her for a half hour, then had to break away. I referred her to Jonathan Mark, a Valleyite, and his FlybyNews.

The chat touched on the Bonnie Prudden Institute (of which she is an alumna), which I am proud to have honored with a limerick from circa 1968 and recited it:

There was a young woman called Tina
Who loved to eat creamed wheat farina [Andrea Shalit]
She blew up like a blimp,
Took a look and went limp,
Bonnie Prudden gave her a subpoena. [B. Henry]

In metropolitan Williamsburg a pair of high school students stopped us briefly looking for our perspective on 2001-09-11, when they were toddlers.

The Brewmaster’s Tavern at the upper end of downtown Williamsburg provided a welcome beer-and-sandwich stop and we telephoned Ellen, who soon enough rolled up in the Gillespie-Henry Honda Civic to wing us to Pittsfield for the night, marking the end of our walking with heavy backpacks.

Dropped off there by Ellen the next morning (T, MY 08), we met two post office patrons successively: a knowledgeable man and a woman identifying herself as the wife of a third-generation ironworker who had said the World Trade Center demolitions could not have happened as in the official account.

MA route 9 runs between Pittsfield and Boston. Milage from the center of Pittsfield is posted every half mile much of the way. The marker near the pick-up point in Williamsburg read 35.0 miles (to Pittsfield). Two days’ march? Three?

We started the climb to the summit in Goshen … then (after three separate conversations) down into Cummington where (after two conversations) we “ran out of gas” at mile 19 from Pittsfield.

Having picked us up there, Ellen delivered us back Wednesday morning to the 19-mile mark, and we began the climb out of West Cummington and over into Windsor (and a bite and a beer at a picnic table outside Friendly Fred’s Citgo), thence down into and through Dalton and into Pittsfield.

The western terminus of MA9 is Park Square, about two miles west of our respective houses, so our milages MY 09 were on the order of 17-18 miles, covered gratefully leaving for another day undetermined to reassemble at intersection of South Street and US route 20 for a final ~10 mile leg to the New York State line.

— Bruce

A supporter of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry wrote the following letter to all members of the Senate Intelligence Committee as the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, got under way:

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Dear Senator _______:

Thank you for your service to our country.

I am writing to inform you of evidence regarding 9/11 events that has just been presented to U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of the Southern District Court of New York.

On April 10, 2018, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry presented a 54 page Petition requesting that a Special Grand Jury be convened to investigate the scientific forensic evidence that pre-placed explosives caused the freefall symetrical global collapses of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7.

The entire Petition and Index of Exhibits is available online at www.lcfor911.org

I am providing to you the Committee’s Executive Summary of this Petition in the attached file.

I am an independent advocate for a new investigation of the 9/11 events.  The truth is becoming known now.

Would you please ask Ms. Haspel if she had knowledge of those pre-placed explosives?

Thank you, Senator.

Ann Hendricks

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Ms. Hendricks is a resident of Grand Portage, Minnesota.

Deputy Director of the CIA since February2017, Ms. Haspel is currently the agency’s Acting Director.

Bill Jacoby of the 9/11 Truth Action Project (https://www.911tap.org/) commented yesterday:

“Regardless of whether her request gets any traction among the senators, I think this is stunning example of an American citizen standing up to power–something not one of those senators will do as courageously.”

(See the entry below, for May 7, for an article about the Lawyers’ petition to the Justice Department.)

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We realized recently that our names, Bruce Henry and Mark Miller, haven’t appeared in this blog recently as earlier entries no longer appear.