Let the Dreamers Wake the Nation

It's a trick of the calendar I know, but in this week following the Remembrance of September 11th, we have opportunities locally to both celebrate the brave men and women of our local and state fire departments as well as ourselves, but first things first.

Starting Friday, and lasting through the weekend, the Taftville Volunteer Fire Department Company #2 hosts the 134th Annual Connecticut State Firefighters Association convention at Kelly Middle School. 

The department itself is celebrating its centennial and certainly didn't look its age when I was there last Saturday as their Chief Tim Jencks (pro tip: don't call him 'sir) hosted sixty or more of us on a walking tour of the Village of Taftville and Ponemah Mills as a preview of events coming soon in Walktober and as a warm-up for this weekend's celebrations hosted by the Taftville Fire Department. 

You can check the calendar of events here but one of the highlights has to be the parade of more than 400 pieces of equipment from fire departments all across Connecticut and more than 3000 participants starting Sunday at noon from Riverview Drive in Lisbon which will make its way through Taftville, and end at Wequonnoc School (I'm hoping for at least 101 Dalmatians but will enjoy as many as show up). 

On a more somber note, on both Saturday and Sunday, will be the 9/11 Never Forget Mobile Exhibit, a high-tech, 53-foot tractor-trailer that opens into a 1,000-square-foot exhibit about the events and heroism of Sept. 11, 2001. The exhibit is a touring outreach of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Siller was a Brooklyn, NY, firefighter who sacrificed his life for others at the World Trade CenterTowers. 

I doubt any of us will ever forget the hate and horror of  9/11 in New York, at the Pentagon or in a Shanksville, Pennsylvania field. I'd like to think the heroism and humanity shown by so many that day will continue to inspire us to show compassion and understanding towards one another as well as empathy for ideas and ideals like (and sometimes very much unlike) our own, and to display the courage of our convictions in living as bravely as those who died that day.

And next Tuesday afternoon, the 19th, we can do just that in Howard T. Brown Park beginning at five at the Norwich Rotary Club's fifth Annual Celebrate Diversity event. 

There'll be entertainment, arts and crafts, and (of course) food from more than a dozen different countries that each of us once called home that we can share with one another here where we all live now, in Norwich, Connecticut.So many people in the same device with hopes, hearts, and dreams for ourselves and our families. Each of us has a tale of how we can to be here, and Tuesday is the perfect time to tell one another those stories.
-bill kenny