Remembering 9/11, Seven Years Later

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  09.11.08 | 5:09 PM ET

imageWe can’t let the day pass without noting the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In Washington, D.C., President Bush dedicated the Pentagon Memorial, which the Washington Post called “the nation’s first major Sept. 11 remembrance site.” Esquire looks at the slow-moving Freedom Towers project at Ground Zero.

On a personal note, I was in Thailand on 9/11, in the midst of a five-month trip in Asia. For the first time in years, I just reread something I wrote hours after the attack, which we published on World Hum. (We started the site several months before 9/11.)

One line stands out to me:

The world is shrinking in so many ways. Yet at times like this, in the face of such horrible news, when friends and family are so distant and we’re surrounded by people who can’t begin to imagine how we feel, the world can feel agonizingly, painfully huge.

Before 9/11, like many people, I had a vague feeling that the world was getting smaller, that globalization and technology were bringing us all closer together, even in terms of understanding.

Sept. 11 shattered that illusion, and the ensuing years have revealed that, while the world is shrinking in some ways, in other ways it’s as big as ever.

Sometimes—say, in the case of travel—that makes life interesting. But other times—for example, on a day like this seven years ago—it’s nothing less than tragic.

 

 

 

Tags: 9.11.01


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