"We gather because this week has been too much to bear. Regardless of the circumstances of these events both near and far, these horrors have left families, friends, and neighbors in our world stunned and in shock."
-- Rev. Erik Karas, of Christ Trinity Church
For as anyone who has attended one knows, high schools are a peculiar mix of social awkwardness and lack of inhibition. Indeed, high school is where the attitudes we learn at home are staged for all to see.
In their statement the clergy of South Berkshire write: “We weep for the refugees who run from terror and we seek to provide a safe harbor for these innocent families caught in the cross-fires. We recognize that responding to hate with hatred and with fear, only fans the fires of enmity among us.”
It is a sad commentary on our society — and even our own little neighborhood here in the Berkshires — that a local woman who felt strongly enough about the offensiveness of Charlie Hebdo’s mockery of Islam to write about it for EdgeWise, still felt she could not risk attaching her name and face to her opinions.
Monument Mountain Regional High School junior Jacob Robbins was in preschool when al-Qaeda terrorists flew two commandeered aircraft into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, toppling the towers and killing more than 3,000. He recently visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City to find connections to a day he doesn't remember.