I realize that most of the work thus far has been foundational & therefore subterranean, but it was really quite surreal and thoroughly depressing to see a giant pit remain there almost 7 years out.

I was a much different person back then, but yet it feels like this just happened yesterday. I remember the expressway being empty of most cars, aside from state troopers. It was so odd being in Philadelphia that day. I was in the middle of the largest eastern US city not hit by a plane. I remember the national guard running down Market Street, and Liberty 1 & 2 being evacuated “just in case”.

I remember how blue the sky was, even while it was blackened North, South, and West of me. When someone told me the WTC collapsed, they got it wrong and said a part “fell off of it”. I was expecting the top quarter to be sheared off. You can imagine my shock when I finally made my way to a TV screen, only to see that it was not cut in size, but missing entirely from the sky.

I remember thinking how I’d never forget that day, and how I wanted a sticker or something like that to commemorate it on the back of my car. I distinctly remember thinking that on the drive home.

And then, seemingly overnight, I remember being disgusted at the politicking that came from the event. The “never forget” mantra quickly became a beat to war, and suddenly legislation sitting in some drawer at the DoD for a decade was put into law without Congress even having a chance to read it. Suddenly I could be investigated for what library books I checked out. Suddenly we were hearing talk of sedition, and how this was a new, changed world. And everything seemed to just fall apart.

The last seven years have been painful indeed for those who lost friends & family on that September morning. But they have been arguably even more painful for those of us who are still living, those of us who have been swept up into the “War on Terror”, those of us who have lost loved ones to multiple tours of Iraq & Afghanistan, those of us who have run afoul of Homeland Security & ridiculous security theater by the TSA. We have a “No Fly List” with nearly 1% of the country on it. We have law-abiding citizens phone-tapped without warrants. We have local police forces looking less & less like fellow citizens, and more & more like paramilitary units. And perhaps most importantly, we have a nation living in fear.

On this day, 11 September 2008, I can do nothing but hope for this country, and indeed the world. May we all find a way to overcome what the last seven years has done to us all.