September 11th destroyed much of what we take for granted in this country. Safety, the speed and convenince of travel, the unimpeeded progress of our individual dreams.

The events were catastrophic. Thousands are people are still missing, and almost 3000 are confimed dead. It's in your mind on a daily basis, and when you travel, it's still a current event. Cranes and heavy equipment are still digging up the rubble of what once was two 104 story skyscrapers, brought to the ground by medieval religious madmen. We're bombing the hideouts of those madmen who did it, and though we are not technically at war, for all practical purposes, we will now be embroiled in a variety of conflicts and small wars for at least a decade to come. The irony of these towers symbolizing mans growth from living in caves having been brought down by a group of men hiding and living in caves still does not elude me.

Everything is still current, the events are still unfolding around us, and yet there is this very unusual aspect of our society that feels the need to consider this as a past happening.

A popular country singer, Alan Jackson, has a hit song right now that is a 'rememberence' song about Sept 11th. With lines such as 'Where were you that day', and 'We remember the fallen heros' the song treats the events of just 4 months ago as if they happened many years ago. As if the events of that day were traumatic yes, but somehow we overcame them, and moved on with our lives. Yes, that day was traumatic, yet if the salvage workers are still pulling fragments of humans from the wreckage, and the war to kill the people who did it is still going on, we really haven't finished yet, have we?

Remembering something in the vein that people are starting to, exemplified by a country-pop star past his prime is a slippery path to go down. It trivializes what really happened, encourages you to remember it as something that happened long ago, and to start the forgetting process. It's not something that deserves forgetting about so quickly.

Two months before the buildings were destroyed, I walked in the plaza separating them, and ran my hands along the walls on the south tower, looking up at the 104 stories of mans ability to rise out of caves. But for the random vagaries of chance, I might have been in the south tower that day. For once in my life, I thank faulty computer equipment, equipment that ultimately kept me from being in the city that week.

I didn't see the events unfold live, I was driving across the wastelands of the western plains that, day, but listened to it on the radio, knowing that I might have been there.

I wonder, as I look at the truck-driving, flag waving rednecks who seem to have over-populated the small town I live in, and wonder if I'd feel the same way if I hadn't been driving back from Minnesota that day, and if I'd been in that plaza, waiting for the first elevator to the top of the south tower. I don't think the radio stations play that song in New York. For the people there, it's a constant reminder, a part of their life that doesn't need a poorly written and overly-trite country song to make them remember their day of terror and life-altering madness.