Woke up to another white-out morning in Vermont (no sun, white bank of fog) in this gruesome summer of 2023 and found the following item in the local listserv:

2. Airport Activity

From: Post Mills Airport 

The US Army will be conducting brief training exercises at Post Mills Airport on Tuesday July 18 and Thursday July 20.  They will be flying in and briefly landing 4 Blackhawk helicopters at the far end of the runway. This will occur around 11 AM on Tuesday and 11 PM on Thursday.  Please do not be alarmed by the noise or the armed men (their weapons are NOT loaded) you might see at the doors of the aircraft.  For the night landing they will be using night vision, so PLEASE no lights!

Any questions email ... 

Thanks!

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Thanks? Do not be alarmed? The United States military has vast bases throughout the country and around the world in which to conduct training exercises. DOD does not need to practice landing in a tiny New England village ajacent to a lake ringed with summer camps, however briefly, for any kind of national security proficiency. Obviously. This "airport," by the way, serves hot air balloons and gliders and is little more than a hay field ajacent to other fields, a little league diamond, a small church. So what is this about? 

Given the encroachments of this coercive, and, post-2020, illegitimate US government, the decision to drop war craft into a New England hamlet in high summer is disturbing -- especially given the hard knocks the state has undergone in the recent flooding rains, which came in a summer of abysmal weather. Not like the southland incineration underway in relentless triple-degree heat, but hot, rainy, humid and unnaturally sunless, and taking its toll on agriculture. What sort of training, then, is on the DOD agenda? Occupation of the hinterlands? "Pacification" practice? Or is this hot air balloon field really the best place SecDef could think of to train his choppers?

I will keep you posted.