Yesterday, of course, the anniversary of 9/11. Went down to Ground Zero to hear the names read. Now that construction's happening on the site itself, the ceremony's outside it, in a nearby park. The families, firefighters, police and EMS people were allowed onto the site to lay wreaths in the towers' footprints, but then they had to come out again. So the loudpeakers were in the park, and the barricades for the people like me who weren't family but just wanted to be there were across the street. Which meant between us and the 3,000 names of the dead were cars, buses, the occasional fire engine. Pedestrians, hot dog carts. Lots of reporters. And you know? I liked that. The thing about these people was, they were living their lives on an ordinary day when those planes crashed into them. They were here, in New York, in all this chaos and vitality, and then they were gone. And here they are, being remembered in that same situation. This year, by the way, the names were read by two groups: people who'd lost someone; and foreign students from the City University system, who announced what country they were from ("I'm honored to be representing the citizens of Thailand.") It was a lovely idea, and a faint shadow of the world-wide solidarity just after 9/11 -- remember that? -- before we threw it all away.