1WTC

After years of delays, the new One World Trade Center is going up fast. I took this picture just one block from my office:

Business Week has an interesting account of how the redevelopment of the site was debated and negotiated over the last 10 years. And of course the next month will see a flurry of writing and coverage related to the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. Ten years ago I was a high school student in Arkansas and New York City felt very far away. My mom had been visiting her sister in DC and was flying home that morning. I needed to see the orthodontist in Little Rock so my dad and I drove down together to pick her up at the airport, and heard the first reports on the radio on the drive down. Nobody in my family flew very often so everyone knew she'd be flying -- my parents spent the rest of the day contacting people to assure them my mom hadn't been on one of the flights. I missed all the emotional reactions of learning at school that many people recount, but that afternoon I worked my normal shift at my town's Kroger grocery store as we had a small rush of people buying supplies, and listened to people talking about lining up to get gas, just in case.