Two years ago today...

Two years ago today, I was vacationing in the Midwest. I was driving from Davenport, Iowa to Rockford, Illinois. Halfway between Davenport and Dubuque, the terrible news started trickling in on the radio, replacing the happy chatter of the morning shows with frantic eyewitnesses to terror.

The mental pictures I got from the radio coverage were, it turns out, quite different from the reality of the atrocity at Ground Zero. I didn't see any pictures of the event till I got to Madison and read the afternoon paper, and saw no video till I got to Rockford that night. It was still shocking, and remains so to this day.

And so today instead of focusing on work I'm thinking of absent friends and a country found and lost.