Four Years On...

Years from now, i suspect that the question 'Where were you when the twin towers fell down?' will be like 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' or 'Where were you when man landed on the moon?'. I can tell you exactly what i was doing at the time the first tower was hit - watching JFK on video (I'd recorded it the night before) at my Dad's house. A week and a half later was when i started my PhD (seems such a long time ago!). Over here, as you can imagine, the mood is very sombre today - i imagine even more so in New York than here in Charleston. Many of the papers and, I believe, TV channels (no TV yet, so not sure), have retrospectives on the events that are certainly the most shocking and memorable of recent history.

Since the World Trade Center collapsed, i have been to Ground Zero twice - once in July 2002, when the rubble had barely been cleared, the dust was still clinging to the surrounding streets and buildings, and the memory of it was all to close. More recently, this February in fact, there were signs of development - the rail link that ran under the Center had now been rebuilt and, as most of us know, plans are going ahead to build a new Freedom Tower - reaching even higher into the sky. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me can see the justification - wanting to show that such atrocities will be overcome. Part of me thinks that this is American attitudes taken to the extreme. Part of me thinks that a simple memorial to the people who died would be much more of a fitting use of the space.

Spare a moment to remember those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.