- Tonight on WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

25 years after September 11th, what does "never forget" mean when millions of young Americans have no memory of that day?

And a health crisis sparks a foray into handcrafted chocolates.

Also, how is climate change affecting the St.

Lawrence River?

We sit down with Save the River executive director, Bridget Wright, to learn more.

Your Stories, your region coming up right now on WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories.

- Funding for WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories is provided by the Statewide Community Re-Grants Program, a re-grant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the St.

Lawrence County Arts Council.

Carthage Savings founded in 1888, offering VA, FHA, seasonal and rural development mortgage products, providing financial services to Northern New York from offices in Carthage, Clayton, Croghan, and Watertown.

Online at carthagesavings.com.

- Good Tuesday evening, everyone, and welcome to this edition of WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

I'm Michael Riecke.

This week marks 25 years since terrorists attacked the United States, killing nearly 3,000 people and forever changing the nation.

For many of us, September 11th isn't simply a date in history.

It's a day we can still picture in vivid detail.

But 25 years later, an entire generation of Americans has no memory of that day.

Some weren't born, others were simply too young to remember.

If we promised to never forget, what does that promise mean when remembering increasingly depends on people who never experienced it?

Like many of you, I remember exactly where I was on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

I was a senior here at Syracuse University walking to class when I first heard the news.

But as we mark the 25th anniversary of nine eleven, I can't help but notice the growing number of people around me who have no memory of that day, including some of my WPBS coworkers.

Take WPBS intern Ruth Quinal, for example.

She was born in 2006.

Her first time really learning about nine eleven and its impact came in school.

I remember it distinctly in my seventh grade history class.

- I was two years old when the September 11 attacks happened.

- WPBS producer Luke Smith says his family rarely discussed nine eleven and his teachers skimmed over it too.

- It was mostly just in passing.

Like they never really taught us about it in school.

- That concerns St.

Lawrence County historian Nancy Lafaver.

She encourages families, teachers who lived through it to pass on their experience, their memories.

- If we don't keep that human peace alive, it just becomes a headline and dry.

And I don't think that honors the Americans and our neighbors that helped us.

I don't think it honors the people who were brave and courageous.

I think it just kind of puts it aside and we don't want it put aside.

- Like me, Lafaver remembers exactly where she was on September 11th, 2001.

Working in a school administrative office, eyes glued to the TV when the second plane hit.

- We were all just stunned.

Completely, we couldn't think of anything to say.

We were just totally stunned.

And it was at that moment that I realized, oh my goodness, something other than a freak accident with dire consequences was going on.

- Lafaver has spent years archiving how the attacks changed St.

Lawrence County and she says there's more work to do.

- There are stories out there we haven't heard yet and people will say, "Oh, that's just an ordinary story."

No, that's an angle or a piece that needs to be preserved.

- Tanya Roy has been thinking about that same challenge.

How do you preserve the emotional connection to September 11th for generations that weren't there?

- One generation or two generations of Americans have that shared human experience, and now there are two generations after us that don't.

And it's almost like we speak a different language when it feels so very important to us to hold on to who we were as a people before and who we became as a people after, because how do you relate that to someone that didn't live through that?

To - Help bridge the gap, Roy is producing a documentary called The North Country Remembers nine eleven 25 years later.

It's an effort to capture stories from local people about their experiences on 9/11 and the days that followed.

While some of those stories are being recorded.

When I heard it was terrorists, I though they'd done it deliberately to disrupt the election.

A different story is being brought to life on stage.

At the Strand, the Watertown Lyric Theater is rehearsing WTC view.

- Everything that's happening, it's really affected people's relationships.

- A play director Craig Thornton says captures the raw emotion of September 11th on a deeply personal scale.

- The play is so specific and such a microcosm of what it was like to be a regular person in New York, and it's so driven by emotions and personal experience.

- Part autobiography, part fiction, the play introduces audiences to a group of New Yorkers navigating the fear and uncertainty so many of us felt in the days following 9/11.

- If you lived in some part far away from New York, your experience isn't maybe as intense as a New Yorker, but it's still an experience that everyone had and I still think it shapes the way that we feel and the way that we behave and the way that we run our lives today.

And maybe somebody who wasn't alive then doesn't understand that their life is affected by it.

- Understanding it is one thing.

- The only thing worse than being there was not have been allowed to go.

- Feeling connected to it is harder.

- The closest we can get is to hear people tell those stories in their own voices and to see them as they're doing it and to see the emotion that it elicits in them.

And that's what art does for us, is it allows us to sit in the dark and share a human experience whether or not we personally have experienced it.

- One morning, 25 years ago, I walked these sidewalks at Syracuse University not realizing I was about to witness one of the defining moments of my generation.

Today, most students here only know 9/11 through the stories they've been told.

And maybe that's what never forget has always meant because memories don't last forever, but stories often do.

You can see the documentary and the play WTC View September 11th and 12th at the Strand Theater in Watertown.

The 20-minute documentary will start before the play begins.

For more information, you can visit watertownlyrictheater.org.

Well, Audrey Brown spent 14 years as a speech and language pathologist before a small stroke prompted her to rethink her path.

Drawing on her love of food, she trained as a professional chocolatier and in 2016 opened Cocoa Bistro in Kingston, Ontario.

Her handcrafted chocolates are true masterpieces that push the boundaries of unique and artisanal.

Audrey's story is an inspiring example of turning a major life challenge into a creative community-focused success.

- After 20 years in her career, Audrey Brown knew it was time for a change.

She wanted to follow something that truly fed her soul and she knew it had to involve food, so she did her homework.

One discovery quickly caught her attention.

A love of chocolate is shared by nearly 95% of the world.

- I really got into this business because of my love for food, not just chocolate.

I mean, the really kind of shameful truth is that I'm not a big sweets person at all.

I mean, I'll have a little bit, but I prefer something savory, something warm and spicy and salty.

And I decided, well, maybe chocolate shouldn't always be just sweet.

So that kind of brought the direction into flavors that were not just your standard pot of gold flavors.

These are the real fun things.

We've had truffles that had black garlic and miso.

We do a lot with sesame seeds, with tahini, with chili peppers.

We do things that are wild and crazy and put people out of their comfort zone because some people want that.

What - Began in Audrey's basement quickly grew.

Without a storefront, she took her chocolate to festivals, bazaars, and local networking events.

Little by little, people discovered her creations.

Orders followed and the business began to blossom.

- When we opened up this shop, the bricks and mortar, that was two years after that I officially started in the basement.

I opened this place pretty much on my own, but over the years I have brought in people that are kind of, they understand my dream, they understand my vision of what I want to do, and they believe in me.

So getting this place was the catalyst and it's allowed me to bring in people to work.

We also have local artisans that bring their wares like cards and gifts, things that people can add in addition to chocolate.

They can bring something along that says, "Hey, this is Kingston."

From - Collaborations with local artists to collaborations of flavor, creativity is at the heart of Cocoa Bistro.

Working with a team of highly imaginative chocolate makers, Audrey introduces collections that shift with the season.

We - Change the collections twice a year.

So right now we're on the fall winter collection, and then maybe Easter shortly after Easter, we switch to our spring/summer collection.

So spring, summer, we tend to focus on ones that are a little more maybe fruity, maybe like a margarita style.

We do a lemoncello basil one, which is one of my absolute favorites and people love it too.

So we try to go according to the season and then also what is on trend with food trends.

It's all about playing around, seeing what flavors will work.

If they work, great.

- If they don't, then no.

While new flavors and seasonal collections keep the chocolate exciting, Audrey believes the real magic goes deeper.

Chocolate has a way of bringing us back to childhood memories, celebrations, and the simple joy of something sweet.

What - I wanted to do from the outset, my mission was to both introduce new flavors, but also to speak to the memories that people have, those childhood memories.

One of our chocolates this time around is I love ovaltine, and I do love ovaltine because it speaks to my childhood memories of coming home from school and having a cup of oval teen.

So I want to do something like that all the time.

And when my staff and I get together, we try and we think about flavors that will be exciting and speak to what we love because we want to have fun making it too.

I want them to enjoy creating the flavors.

It's part of it.

- We have great people who work here.

We have people that take pride in their work and it shows.

People come in and they say, "Oh my gosh, Audrey, that truffle was amazing," or, "Oh my gosh, Audrey, those marshmallows were absolutely incredible."

We aim to make the best product with the best quality, quality ingredients.

- From carefully chosen ingredients to handcrafted creations, every detail matters.

And for many customers, the chocolates at Cocoa Bistro are something special in every delicious sense of the word.

- Audrey's chocolates are experiences.

It's just not a nice sweet treat.

It's a chocolate experience, the euphoria of the smell of fine chocolate.

Audrey only uses Belgian fine chocolate for her confections here.

Her truffle display is very alluring, and I'm telling you, the quality of those truffles is pretty darn high.

To - Me, coming in and seeing people come in and saying, "You know, I got this box of chocolate at Christmas and I had to have more and I had to see what you do."

And that just reaffirms every single day that I'm doing the right thing.

You're the best.

- For - WPBS - Weekly, I'm Gail Paquette.

- And have a good time this afternoon.

- You can learn more at Cocoabistro.ca.

Sometimes the impacts of climate change are easy to see.

Other times, the effects can go unnoticed by untrained observers.

Along the St.

Lawrence River, one group is working to track shifts in the river's ecosystem and raise awareness about how climate change is affecting the waterway and its surroundings.

I sat down with Save the River executive director, Bridget Wright, to learn more.

Bridget Wright, executive director of Save the River.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank - You for having me.

- If I can have you rewind the clock a bit.

Can we look back 10 years, 20 years compared to today, what are the most noticeable changes you see in the river?

- The most noticeable changes I see right off the bat would be we're having warmer summers.

Many years ago, we rarely had a day in the summer where we were needing air conditioning or needing that kind of relief, maybe one or two days.

Now we're locals, everybody's setting up for, we need air conditioning, we need this kind of cooling periods because of the high humidity as well.

We're also seeing less ice and people are noticing the shorter season of winter at some points and less winter activities, such like that.

That's I think one of the main things people see right off the bat.

- So I think when we think of climate change, our brains immediately go to warming and the effects that that has.

So how is the warming climate impacting the river directly?

What are we seeing?

- Well, there's a number of factors.

So even with the river warming just a few degrees, you're going to see a number of factors, even though it's just a couple of degrees over historical amount of time.

So the first thing we were seeing is the fishermen and the anglers and such, they're like, where are these fish?

Where are the musky, where are the pike?

These cold water fish are essentially staying in colder parts of the water longer.

The fishermen's fishing ship cycle has kind of shifted.

The warm water fish, such as like bullheads, perch, stuff like that, they're staying in areas that are more suitable to them.

And so we're kind of seeing a shift there.

When the water does warm up, there's less oxygen available, less dissolved oxygen.

There's just not enough of that cool water and oxygen available for fish.

So you're going to see less fish and you may see more invasive species.

With this warmer weather comes more volatile storms.

So we're going to be probably seeing more of that in the future and even just in the past couple years.

So more thunderstorms, rainstorms, these torrential storms coming in in the summertime.

And then as we saw last winter, particularly last winter, these, we call them the polar vortexes.

We may see a mild warm winter, and if we do, we'll probably see more and more of those crazy polar vortexes coming in immediately and freezing everything up and staying for a certain amount of days and then exiting the area.

So - It impacts the fish.

What about plant life?

- Yeah, same thing.

So the plant life, the native plant species are used to a certain temperature.

They're used to a certain amount of oxygen.

We would see the same thing with them.

If it's not the right environment for them, they won't thrive the same way.

And that opens up to other plant species and invasive marine species that are like, "Oh, this area is good for us."

And of course, that's not the balance that we want to see.

- We've seen so many headlines about invasive species in the river, not just the river, but also neighboring lakes, other bodies of water.

Yes.

Is that related to climate change?

- Yes.

There are some.

So for example, a lot of times people look at zebra mussels, certain, the gobies and such.

They came in through shipping.

They don't like the warm weather either.

So they're just happenstance, however, but there are a number of invasive species that kind of thrive in a warmer environment.

And some of them even like bugs that have gotten into the hemlock trees or certain trees and stuff that are being wiped out.

I think they were talking about the lanternflies taking over now, but same in the water.

There are certain species that will just kind of dominate the area, eat up all the food and they become a little bit stronger where the native species not being in their optimal environment will become weaker or become food.

Yeah.

- And it's food not just for the fish and the plant life, but also we're talking about birds and mammals as well who - Rely on the.

Yes, exactly.

And so definitely with migratory birds and birds that thrive or nest in the wetlands.

So we're seeing with the warmer air, we will see less of the wetlands thriving because they need that consistent seasonal cool air coming in.

And without these natural wetlands, the birds don't have their regular place to migrate, like something like a black turn are used to using the Atlantic flyway as a way to come in and nest.

If it's not there, they might move on or just kind of have less habitat to thrive and would decrease it numbers.

- What kind of work is being done to monitor these changes and ultimately do our best to mitigate them?

- Save the River, we have our own programs to help monitor certain species.

Obviously, there's not a lot.

We do that as high tech, but it's valuable.

So we gather our own data.

We banned our turns that we monitor.

So we protect our turns and we ban them and kind of monitor their data from year to year and see if they're thriving.

They were on a threatened list and endangered list at one point.

The musky catch and release and then we started the bass catch and release started such a movement of awareness that, hey, let's not catch all these fish and put them on the dock and take pictures of them and then throw them out.

Let's value them and put them back.

And I think that's created a wonderful movement there.

But there's, if you look towards the Thousand Islands Biological Station and NOAA and up, they have much more higher technology that can monitor the water flows and they do fish tagging and such amazing things to have even better information, which they share, which is wonderful for us to be able to track all of that.

- Is there any one thing in particular that you've noticed during your time with the organization that has really made a remarkable difference or something you're proud of?

- We've always had the musky catch and release program and, and touted about how great it is.

And it, and people, fishermen that fish musky, they're, you know, they're very respectful of the musky and along with Thousand Islands Biological Station, they actually help to breed the muskies.

They take care of the muskies.

They make sure that they have a habitat to do so.

And so the musky population is coming back and we're starting to see that with Sturgeon, which is, you know, one of my favorite fish, which is on our shirt this year.

You know, they've been gone from the river basically for a very long time due to overfishing and we're slowly but surely, they're getting restocked and Tibbs is watching them.

So that's very exciting.

We've had other projects that we're very proud of.

Not everybody's proud of Plan 2014 that it, you know, helps to.

And basic idea of the Plan 2014 that went through was to just have the water levels mimic Mother Nature just a little bit more to try to get some fluctuation in the wetlands because they were, they, they, you know, if they're dried out or they don't get some sort of water fluctuation, they don't thrive.

It did go through.

We were proud of that.

And of course, we were proud of stopping winter navigation, you know, having the ships go through when it's iced over is so bad for the river, for the shoreline, for the fish, for a number of reasons.

Plus the thing that's the thing that keeps you up at night is the chance of those ships being stuck in ice and maybe having a rupture or a spill like we saw almost 50 years ago today with the NEPCO oil spill.

It's our.

The anniversary is in a week.

So we're always on a little bit of an alert with that.

It's.

I don't think we could really come back from something like that in the winter.

So being able to stop that and continuing to fight it is something that we're very proud of as well.

- I, I started our chat by asking you to look back 10 or 20 years and, and think about what's changed since then.

If I can get you to fast-forward now.

Yeah.

Think about 20 years from now.

When you look out at, at the river, what would you like to see?

What would be your ideal?

- My ideal would be, wow, look at this beautiful river ever since we changed 20 years ago and stopped treating it like a commodity to make money or to dump our toxic byproducts in, and we started treating it like a, a living system and a friend, it is now thriving and we don't have to worry about our drinking water, which is used to be toxic from time to time.

We don't have to worry about fish die-offs, which we were seeing from time to time.

It's just thriving and it's wonderful and it's all about treating it with kindness and respect.

- We're all.

I mean, it's part of our backyard, right?

The St.

Lawrence River.

You get to spend a lot more time on it than most of us.

What, what is your favorite part in, in, in 20 seconds about being a part of this ecosystem?

- Oh, my favorite part is, is after a day of working and knowing that we're about to help something, we're about to save, maybe help save a species or we're bringing awareness to people and that is always the first step and the most important step is awareness that, "Hey, this is your drinking water.

We're testing it and it has e.coli in it.

Let's all work together, please, to help keep it alive.

It is a living thing.

It does need oxygen."

That is really rewarding at the end of the day compared to jobs I've had way long time ago waitressing or whatever, which was fun, but you don't have that end of the day thinking, "Wow, I just really helped this little buddy of mine."

So I do have to cross the bridge every day when I go to work.

So every day I'm like, "I got your back today," you know?

That - Is so good to hear.

Yeah.

- Bridget - Wright, thank you so much for doing this.

You're very - Welcome.

We really - Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- You can learn more at savetheriver.org.

Well, that does it for this Tuesday evening.

If you have a story you'd like us to pursue, we'd love to learn more.

All you need to do is send us an email at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org and let's share it with the region.

That's it for tonight.

Join us next time for a fresh look inside the stories.

Until then, stay safe and take care.

- Funding for WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories, is provided by the Statewide Community Re-Grants Program, a re-grant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the St.

Lawrence County Arts Council.

Carthage Savings founded in 1888, offering VA, FHA, seasonal and rural development mortgage products, providing financial services to Northern New York from offices in Carthage, Clayton, Croghan, and Watertown.

Online at carthagesavings.com.

- And it's almost like we speak a different language when it feels so very important to us to hold on to who we were as a people before and who we became as a people after.

How do you relate that to someone that didn't, didn't live through that?