This sunday will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. On Wednesday, NYC mayor Bloomberg and almost everyone else working on the new World Trade Center site held a press conference to give yet another thin update on building progress. I feel like the process has been long and empty – but I was thrilled to see Silverstein properties come out with a moving video to re-stimulate my interest and connection to the site.

 

The video (more like a short film, really) mixes live action, tilt shift and impressive CGI effects to tell the story of a new World Trade Center. Surprisingly, (though it’s been a big piece of the winners and losers bidding to build) there are green spaces and water features. It’s calm and thriving and new and somehow, even with it’s soaring heights, modest. After all NYC and the rest of the country have been through, it seems like a high point. Finally, after all this time.

Also, here is a link to an incredible article that my good friend sent me on grief and western culture’s abandonment of grieving rituals. It just makes me think about all those times when I felt a splinter of anger rise up in me when someone very, very far removed from the tragedy of 9/11 somehow makes a distant connection to the death and destruction via the friend of a 3rd cousing or something. I used to think that they had no right to feel the same way I felt about 9/11 – I was there, they were in Wisconsin or something. I’m rethinking that now. In a situation this big and sad, I guess we all need to grieve.

This Sunday, I’ll take a moment to remember that day back in 2001 and thank all the men and women involved in responding, recovering and rebuilding. I hope you do too.