6 observations about 9/11

It’s been 6 years since the hor­ri­ble events of that day. To com­mem­o­rate, here are 6 small obser­va­tions about that date:

• 6 years ago: “We Will Never For­get.” Today: “Time to Move on”. It seems there’s an expi­ra­tion date on national grief.
• 6 terms most Amer­i­cans didn’t know 6 years ago:
  • Osama Bin Laden
  • Al Qaeda
  • Patriot Act
  • Depart­ment of Home­land Security
  • Guan­tanamo Bay deten­tion center
  • NSA Wire­tap
• For the last 5 years, the Empire State Building’s lights were turned off in mem­ory of those who died on 9/11. The light­ing sched­ule for tonight says that it will be dif­fer­ent this year: the col­ors will be “red, white, and blue”.
• 9/11 Memo­ri­als are not dom­i­nat­ing this morning’s head­line in the New York Times but the events of that day and their reper­cus­sions still are:
  • Of the 17 head­line on the front page, one is about today’s ceremony’s, one is about Pak­istan (a coun­try few cared about before 9/11), 5 are about Iraq (a war that was launched based on the erro­neous claim of a link to 9/11), one is about sur­veil­lance laws (part of the extended pow­ers given to law enforce­ment after 9/11 but still con­tentious), and one is about Giu­liani (who built his national rep­u­ta­tion (and pres­i­den­tial bid) on the fact that he was mayor on 9/11). That’s 9 head­lines out of 17 and more than two thirds of the front page.
• 6 years later, only one tower (World Trade Cen­ter 7) has been built at ground zero. It took 3 years (1929–1931) to build the Empire State Build­ing and 3 years (1928–1930) to build the Chrysler Building.
• There was a build­ing on 28th street between Park and Madi­son avenue where some­one had cre­ated a mini-memorial by hav­ing the fol­low­ing words engraved on the win­dow in neat 28 point sans-serif type: “9/11/01 — We will never for­get”. The build­ing was recently con­verted to lux­ury con­dos; the win­dow is gone.

In Memo­riam: Car­los Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vin­cent, Michael DiPasquale, Cyn­thia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Hal­der­man, Steve Wein­berg, Ger­ard Jean Bap­tiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.