Every decade offers asylum to events that modify who we are individually and collectively. The 1960's, the decade I came into the world, took President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King from us at the hands of human darkness then gave us restored hope for our future in its final year as we watched men step onto the surface of the moon from some 230,000 miles away.

Only a few events in my life time have had the certain pith to mark a day and lay claim to it on every year that follows. Today is the anniversary of the events of the morning of September 11, 2001. Everyone can recall precisely where they were and what they were doing in the moments they learned that the World Trade Center towers had been hit by a second plane.

Everyone recalls the sudden debilitating sense we felt on learning the Pentagon had been the target of yet another hijacked commercial airliner. In those moments following news that this was not a singular event and while thousands of commercial airliners still filled the skies over the US and Canada we can recall the helpless feeling as we waited and wondered what was next and if the buildings and cities close by or containing us, our family or friends would become a part of this surreal cataclysm.

In our final year of the new millennium's first decade and on this day, we recall once again the events of 911 and the unique ways they attached themselves to each of us.

Personally I wonder about those who lost friends and family members, how their lives were altered and what this day must represent to them. I imagine how the perspective of the world has been displaced permanently for those who witnessed first hand the events of that day. I ponder the retrogressive nature government can default to in the face of crises. and I contemplate those who have themselves experienced war on their own soil.

We have the harrowing memories of a few uncertain hours on September 11 2001. An isolated event by comparison with September 1st 1939 which saw the invasion of Poland and the start of WW2. In the seven years to follow, much of the world would go to bed each night fearful that only time stood between them and certain death in one of the bombing raids that devastated cities throughout much of Europe and Britain that in the end, left as many as 70 million persons dead by hand and decision of others unknown to them.

As 911 becomes as distant in time to us as WW2 was to me as a young child I appreciate more the recollections of family and others who lived through it and the purposeful nature in which they memorialized events seemingly long past.