Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

Today, as every year, we remember, and I don't even pretend anymore, I don't even try to shake the feeling, like shaking the dust off of you if you had been there. Even the dust itself is sacred. This past year I was at Ground Zero for the first time, and I am glad I saw it this way. I remember in my early 20's I visited the very spot with a group of my co-workers from a camp in northern NH. We had driven through the night to visit one girls family outside NYC, and to spend our Saturday off in the city, walking. We were poor Camp workers, not enough money to take a cab, or eat at a nice place, or even sight-see like some might. But, we had good walking shoes, time to kill, youth, and a spirit of adventure, so we walked the city, ate from food carts, one Chinese place, and even took pictures with the NYPD. We saw the towers, how big they were, and marveled at their presence, we came into the subway station under them, never imagining someday, they would be decimated. This year was the first time I had been there since, it is erie, and quiet, and peaceful, and sad all at once. It is an oasis if solitude and a fitting memorial in the middle of a city that doesn't sleep.

The feelings, sights and thoughts of that day are etched in my mind, like the names on the reflecting pools, and the benches at the pentagon, and in a field in Rural Pennsylvania. 11 years later, not one bit diminished, not one bit. God Bless the U.S.A.