Nine Years On

I went to the New York Historical Society to watch again the HBO video made on the first anniversary of 9/11 with Giuliani and others talking of the horrors of the day and the footage, so seared in everyone's mind, of the planes striking the towers, the bodies falling, the passersby covered in dust, the volunteers combing through debris, the sad flyers of the missing, and the funerals. It was horrible to see. My wife made the right decision not to go and sit through it all again. Afterwards, all I could do was bike for an hour until I finally felt a little less awful.

And out of those few days of unity within the midst of horror, we have now come all too often to this -- a reflex demonization of other cultures and other religions, even within the midst of this country; a minister who threatens to burn copies of the Koran; an uproar over a plan to site a mosque near, but hardly on, the site where the terrorism occurred. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. Maybe it ultimately won't, but for now at least things sure look damn ugly sometimes.