Every year, I write a remembrance on this date. This year, I went deeper, and shared what I wish I could tell everyone who was too young to remember the day. What was it _actually_ like to be in NYC on that day, without the contrived myth that's arisen since? www.anildash.com/2024/09/11/2...

23: What was 9/11? - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

I was about as far south of NYC as you could get without entering Florida, but people I knew on IRC and AIM there were talking about it when they could find a working internet connection. The difference in tone between people actually living it and people plotting to use it was palpable.

Thanks for the article. My recollections are less profound. Thankfully, I didn't know anyone who died, but I still remember the bright blue sky and the smell, which made it all the way up to Columbia. And then, for a long time afterwards, looking up every time a plane flew overhead.

i was in the air that morning as you know. it’s a bit more abstract each year.

Thanks for sharing! We forget all too soon what it means to be affected & responded with strength by coming together.

Great piece

💙🧡💙🧡

Thank you.

You're absolutely right about the smell, of course. My strongest visual memory, which I've seen few people talk about, is all the women walking uptown in their stockings carrying their high heels in their hands, and the sudden awareness that we lived on an island.

Thanks for this. I was away at college but I still remember the smell hitting me when I came home that December.

We saw with our own eyes. We had a common set of facts. We united not because of politics but because of our shared reality. There were plenty of conspiracy theorists but they were all dismissed as cranks. That was the unity of 9/11. We will not get it back anytime soon.