One of the better tribute videos I saw on YouTube

set to Evanescence's haunting song, 'My Immortal'.

In some ways yesterday was a matter of routine. I went over and prepped for and then played the game, just like any other Sunday. But I listened to the NPR coverage of the memorial ceremonies. I know they're not supposed to have dead air on the radio, but it really bugged me that each moment of silence--when I was trying to compose my thoughts and pay tribute to those lost, the hostess for the programme kept butting in, sometimes just a few seconds in, going 'and now we have a moment of silence....' It really hampered the act of remembrance, I think.

On September 11, 2001, I was walking to work when the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. Someone mentioned it when I got in, but at first I thought it was a small plane like before, a mistake, not an airliner. Once it was apparent that the planes were part of a terrorist attack I was not so much stunned or surprised that it had happened, but embarrassed that we had been caught unawares.

However, what I really had no concept of what the number of people packed into that site. Although I have visited large cities (but not New York), the largest city I've ever lived in is Lexington. I've never been in a building taller than 30 floors and the highest I've evacuated from is twelve. In my naïveté I truly thought most everyone had gotten out. It was not until days later that I realised how many people were there, and what short time they had. I couldn't grasp even the number of rescue workers who had been killed, much less the thousands still trying to make their way down those towers. The sheer enormity of it stunned me, after the fact. I have lived in towns with fewer residents than those killed in just the New York attack. The population of my hometown would have fit in the World Trade Centre complex. Even now, that's the only way I can visualise the number of people who died.

Listening to the names being read, I was struck by the variety of ethnicities and religions represented. It made me very proud that so many people from so many different backgrounds could come together in one place and work together, a true American melting pot. Not all societies can claim such pluralism or cosmopolitan unity.

Of course, in the aftermath of the attacks, many Americans conveniently forgot that Muslims who had done nothing other than to show up to work that day were killed, too. People stupid enough to take out their frustration on others they perceived as at fault were often wrong, not even getting the ethnicity of their victims right, while perpetuating hate. And don't even get me on the invasion of a country that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. Two wars and thousands of military and civilian lives later, we are less free, more fearful, and we've changed. The world itself--not just America--is very different from the one that might have been should that the events of that day have never happened. In the long run, there are things for the better, things for the worse. But I think it's fitting to remember that beautiful late summer day when things changed, the lives lost, and the legacies left behind.