It seems odd to have remembrances of 9/11 every year since it happened. It’s almost like Americans feel some sort of obligation to commemorate the day, but we lack the historical context to really understand what we are commemorating.

On September 11, 2001, I was on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC. I was supposed to be covering a press conference about genocide in the Sudan. When I arrived at the hearing room, the first plane had already struck the towers. A few minutes later, we were evacuated from the building, because there were unconfirmed reports of an airplane heading towards the Capitol. I headed out of the building and out of DC, along with thousands of other people, who jammed the roads and sidewalks. Oddly enough, I decided to talk down the Capitol Mall, instead of hop on the Metro at the first station I came to. I figured I’d give people a chance to get moving before I would even try. There was a very strange sense of quiet and peacefulness on the Mall that day. It was virtually deserted, as most people were trying to get out of town. I eventually descended into the subway, which was, of course, packed with frustrated and scared commuters. One guy on the train asked me what was going on, as he hadn’t been near a TV all day.

My office was a short distance from the Pentagon, in northern Virginia. I could see the smoke rising from the plane crash there. I made the tactical error of trying to get home from DC to Baltimore that afternoon. The commuter trains were shut down, so I was stuck. I eventually made my way to my old college roommate’s apartment in DC. We hung out all afternoon, watching the coverage on TV. I did eventually get home, later that night.

I remember the weeks and months after 9/11/01 quite vividly. I remember walking through our neighborhood on the Friday night after 9/11, and seeing so many people lighting candles in their windows as a sign of remembrance. I remember seeing a man standing in a traffic circle in Towson, Maryland, holding an American flag, just standing there. He must have stood there for hours. People would honk and wave at him. I suppose, for him, it was his way of expressing what he was feeling that week.

A few months later, my wife and I visited Ground Zero in New York. It was truly an amazing sight to see, especially contrasted against the Christmastime backdrop of the city.

I’ve heard it argued that September 11, 2001, was the true beginning of the twenty-first century. Some historians make the case that the 1990’s began with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and ended on 9/11. We are now living in the middle of a new and different era.