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Eleven Years Gone

September 11 sneaked up on me this year, and as I look back it seems almost impossible that terrible day was over a decade ago now. The memories are still vivid — the burning buildings, the smoke and particulates in the air, the posters everywhere of the missing — but they’ve taken on the vividness of a remembered dream, the kind where you’re not sure you’re remembering the actual events or remembering your stories of them. A lot has happened to me in the intervening eleven years, both in terms of personal relationships and my career. I got married again. I published more and better. I signed a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press. Unfortunately, most of what has happened at Ground Zero itself in the intervening eleven years has been utterly mortifying bullshit, but even that seems to be progressing now, despite the continuation of the bullshit.

One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower, but that’s such a bullshit jingoistic name I can’t even bring myself to say it with a straight face) is almost complete, finally. Of course, in the eleven years that have passed we could have rebuilt the Twin Towers three times over, but that’s a moot point. Soon, One World Trade Center will be finished and that will be a long-missing balm to the wounds of 9/11.

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum still isn’t ready, not even eleven years on, because of the same kind of dick-swinging bullshit that delayed rebuilding One World Trade Center. However, an agreement was reached yesterday between the Mayor and the Governor to resume work, so who knows, maybe next year?

In other no-longer-quite-so-embarrassing news, the government has finally stopped with the bullshit, admitted it wasn’t safe to send workers into Ground Zero right after the attacks, and at long last added 58 different types of cancer to the list of covered illnesses for people who were exposed to toxins at the site. This, too, happened only yesterday.

There was a lot of unnecessary bullshit to wade through, a lot of stupid turf wars and “who’s going to pay for this?” but we seem to be moving forward, finally. Maybe soon I won’t have to be so mortified anymore.

In happier news, Osama Bin Laden is still dead.

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