9/11

From the Los Angeles Times:

Today, President Bush will lead the ceremony dedicating the first national memorial to the victims of that tragic day when four planes were hijacked and nearly 3,000 people were killed. The memorials at the site of the World Trade Center towers in New York and in Shanksville, Pa., where one plane crashed in a field, have been delayed by arguments over construction costs and design.

The two-acre memorial at the Pentagon -- with 184 steel-and-granite benches, each engraved with a victim's name -- is about 200 feet from the crash site, oriented along the plane's flight path.

[…]

Unlike Pentagon tours, which can only be booked by groups through reservations made at least two weeks in advance, the memorial will be open to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week, starting at 7 tonight.

More info on the memorial itself, its designers, and photos of the concept at the link above. While the memorial is impressive indeed in its first and early days, I can’t help but wish I could visit it 30 years on… once those maple saplings become towering protectors over the individual monuments. It will truly be amazing then.

I highly recommend you go read Steeljaw Scribe’s retrospective on the 9/11 Pentagon attack. He was there. He lost friends and comrades-in-arms that day. And his narrative is compelling, written as it is in the unique and incomparable first-person perspective. You’ll not find better.

The Pentagon memorial is merely the first of the three planned major memorials. We should keep ALL the victims of 9/11/2001 in our hearts and minds… especially on this seventh anniversary of the tragedy.

And never, ever forget.