still, a sad day, remarkably so

so just a bunch of links
Nice and short piece (especially nice, for being so short) in The Broadsheet Daily yesterday, heading a list of events that memorialize September 11, 2001. I hope he won’t mind me quoting the paragraph, in full:

How do you observe an eleventh anniversary? The etiquette guides say that steel is the gift of choice for the first year of a relationship’s second decade. If that’s true, we’ve been gifted in more ways than one. All around us, steel spires soar to the empyrean, both triumphal and melancholy. And, as we move further into the second ten years of our relationship with the post-9/11 world, our collective hearts have been steeled. "Always think of it, never speak of it," was the motto of French patriot Leon Gambetta in coping with the severing of part of his country in the 1870s. For those of us who were severed from part of ourselves 4,018 mornings ago, this is a time of much reflection and few words. But perhaps an anniversary marked by the first number that cannot be counted on two hands is significant in another way: Maybe this is the year when we begin to let go.

Then there’s this startling photo (to me, at least) taken from space that day: souls drifting (together) into the heavens.

I am grateful that the media orgy from last year’s 10 Year Anniversary has not been repeated, but I am in the same place as I was then:

I thought this year would be different. That I would be able to read stories and look at video and images from ten years ago, and even to (finally) write something about my own experience of That Day (on That Day, and since).
 

But I am not, and this year turns out to be no different, except that it is much worse, with the saturation of stories and images on all media all the time. Exponentially more ‘coverage’; exponentially more heads talking.

The links to past Manhattan Loft Guy posts on this date, from last year’s post:

2010: same day, another year (from a mother who lost a daughter and a not-yet grand-daughter) [fixed the link 9.13]
 

2009: 8 years, still fresh  (one of my least favorite people channels one of my most favorite)
 

2008: September 11, again (New York names, as of 2008)
 

2007: (see 2005)
 

2006: September 11 / 343 firefighters (“How many cities in this country even have 343 firefighters??”)
 

and 2006: September 11 / read the names (all the names, as of 2006; “It turns out that I am most definitely not able to post much of anything today, and still unable to read (let alone watch) what passes for media coverage of the fifth anniversary.” and “As this is a blog about Manhattan real estate, please reflect as you read the names on the many places around the globe these New Yorkers came from (or their families came from in an earlier generation). A terribly sad, terribly potent cross-section of the global village that is Manhattan.”)
 

2005: (how did I not write that day? probably as in my first 2006 post, above)
 

Peace out.

Peace out, indeed.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012