9/11

It has been exactly 6 years when hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The dreary skies created a grim backdrop, and a sharp contrast to the clear blue of that morning in 2001.

How to remember 9/11??

If actions speak louder than elegy, it tells you where we are that the team coverage on the eve of the 6th anniversary of 9/11 alternated between General Petraeus' performance on Capitol Hill and Britney Spears' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. Osama returned to prime time, only to be mocked for his "impotence" and apparent need for Grecian Formula. A New Jersey community that lost 100 people that day has had to delay expansion of its memorial because fund raising fell short. September 11 falls once again on a Tuesday, we are six years away from the fire, and wondering what that means.

Some people fear complacency; others fear forgetting. Others have only limited space in memory, and the day is overwritten by the events that followed, by war and hurricane and every family's private trials. But the record can't be erased, any more than a year can have 364 days, and anything can bring it back full screen, like a glance at a skyline, a siren in the distance, a prayer that comes as reflex as you walk to work and remember the day they never came home.