I have lived in Easthampton, Ma around 5 years. It’s an old industrial town that has been left to flounder on its own for a while.

Once upon a time there were a lot of buttons made here. There have been some improvements the last few years and some old factories have been reborn as condo’s and art spaces. Every once in a while a new business will sprout up along the narrow strip of downtown.

Easthampton is still a working class town made up of an aging Polish-American population. Lately, there has been an influx of affluent young couples buying houses, which are less costly than neighboring Northampton.

Sadly with a swelling of citizens comes interested businesses. Stop and Shop supermarket chain has high hopes to build a store in Easthampton. All that is left for Stop and Shop to build is an ok by the planning board, which is holding a meeting on September 23. If built, the tax money generated will be good for the town, which has had trouble funding the school system of late.

Unfortunetly it will be in with Stop and Shop and out with the Tasty Top, a tradition in town. Also closing will be the Easthampton Driving range located behind the soft serve ice cream shop.

This isn’t the first time these businesses have been rumored to close. Signs on the Tasty Top still say they will be back next season, but this time feels different.

The tasty top is a shack, the building is nothing special. However eating their ice cream while admiring the view is. The view from the Tasty Top is beautiful; Mt. Tom, Easthampton’s Atlas framed against the sky.

There are already 4 grocery stores in a 5 mile radius of my apartment. It is already too much. A 5th store is unnecessary, but a probable conclusion. Another factor in this situation is the Big E’s grocery store just a half mile from the proposed Stop and Shop. It is the only Big E’s in existence. Another local business perhaps with it’s own eminent fate awaiting.

I had a sundae the day before the Tasty Top closed. Vanilla ice cream drowning in butterscotch with a dollop of whipped cream. Halfway through the gooey delight, it made me sick to my stomach just as it always does. And just like always I finished it smiling as my plastic spoon stood upright, unflinching in the coating of butterscotch at the bottom of the Styrofoam bowl like a flag pole in cement.  I wiped my sticky face and gave one last look at the mountain without an obstructed view.

Seven years ago on 9/11 our vows were confirmed. We, for better or worse, were wed to terrorism and every year we celebrate that anniversary. Every year we are bombarded from multiple sources about what that union means.

Tomorrow there will no doubt be plenty of photo Ops for the presidential candidates. Obama and McCain will reach deep down and give what their prospected constituents will agree as emotionally pure yet firm speeches about the war on terror, how all the victims and their families will not be forgotten, we are all united because of 9/11, etc….
The network news anchors who will probably be broadcasting from the site of ground zero will tell a poignant story about a survivor or a family who lost someone. They will tell us about the ongoing rebuilding process. One of the survivors may even be standing next to one of the candidates maybe even President Bush who will give one of his sideways across the stage nods in a good gesture sort of way.

The papers will have stories about survivors as well. Stories on the implications on the attack to Afghanistan and Iraq and the changes in airline security.
On top of the news, the conspiracy theories will be mass emailed. Perhaps in 50 years or however long it takes for documents to be unclassified we will get to the truth of what happened or more importantly what led up to those terrible events. But, this is America and its citizens will probably get a few hundred photocopied pages heavily blackened by a large tipped permanent marker leaving the document to read like a pile of vomited conjunctions.

I thought about this in the car ride to work this morning while listening to NPR. The story on was about how President Bush was going to reduce military personnel out of Iraq towards the final days of his term and then add more military personnel to Afghanistan. McCain thinks it is good as long as we have won the war in Iraq and Obama said it was too little too late and we should pull all our troops out of Iraq and bring them home. Obama goes on to add that he will if president deploy more troops to Afghanistan. When will the government realize that this particular war has no national boundaries. In certain ways the “war on terror” is more like the “war on drugs” than most any other war fundamentally speaking. The war on drugs has been going on for a long time, the rate it is going it will be the new 100 years war. The United States believes that it needs to use force when it can and this is where it fails. Force does not solve every problem and more than not leads to more problems.

Here in Massachusetts the weather is perfect after a week of humidity and what was left of Tropical Storm Hanna. The air has that same crispness of biting into a fresh apple from the local orchards. Even though the forecast calls for 83 degrees, the wind is whispering a prelude to autumn. If it were saturday, I would be hiking early in the morning trying to spot some migrating hawks catching the thermals southward, but it is sunday and I will be sitting in front of the television watching grown men, throw, kick, catch run with and otherwise try and rip each other apart. Yes it is the 1st NFL sunday: kickoff weekend. Although I already saw The New York Football Giants (defending superbowl champs for all you degected and still flabbergasted Pats, fans) on thursday night win their season opener, I am still enthralled to be watching any game today. Beyond all the endzone dances or the first down hand gestures or the 300lb guard beating his chest after sacking the opposing teams quarterback is a game of determination, skill and heart.

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