Viewing the 9/11 Memorial

Recently we got the chance to see the 9/11 memorial from one of the adjacent buildings, the Millenium Hilton. 9/11 has been so heavily documented and discussed, and the 10th anniversary coverage so intense that I was surprised to be moved when looking at the memorial. The memorial is very simple, very striking, very moving - it says everything.  Maybe even more so from above, where we can see the clean cut holes and the surrounding forest of buildings. A beautiful choice, like a peaceful scar. Don't forget - learn and move on.

I also took the following video of the whole site. It's interesting how small the holes look in relation to the size of the people around them, but we can see that the new tower (only at half the final size) has a very similar sized base.

(No sound.)

Another thing that moves me most is hearing stories of how each person learned about what was happening. 

I was in Pittsburgh during 9/11, I had just moved to the States that August. I was living with family and barely knew anybody at school. I had gone into Carnegie Mellon that morning and passed a small clump of people hanging in front of a large TV in one of the big common buildings. I passed by a couple of times until I realized that they were not watching some action movie, but the news; the first two planes had hit. We still proceeded to class, what else were we to do? During class, a big lecture hall, someone came in and whispered something to the teacher, and they announced that we were to evacuate the school. The cell phones were already not working properly, overloaded. The feeling of confusion was such that I just went to work instead, at one of CMU's research facilities, until we got told to leave there as well. It was unclear why we were evacuating or why going home would be better. A rumor went around that Pittsburgh would be on a top 10 list of symbolic places to hit in the States because of its role in the steel industry or that CMU itself could be a target. I  tried to go home except the buses had been diverted for the evacuation efforts (ironic) so I hung out on the street for hours with a growing number of strangers. It was strange and unreal but not necessarily very scary. The news about a plane falling in PA had made people outside of Pittsburgh more worried about us than we were. The rest of the day was spent in front of the computer trying to absorb all the news as if that would explain everything... 

Where were you?