My wife dropped the big boy off at Kindergarten, I dropped the little guy at pre-school. I crossed Eighth and 23rd and an emergency vehicle took the corner exceedingly fast, the pedestrians jumping back onto the curb. One woman crossed herself and I thought “you don’t see that much anymore.” Growing up, there were people who would cross themselves when a car backfired. Not so much these days.
So I’m thinking this sort of stuff when I enter my buidling and the doorman says “Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center.” And I say “Two planes collided in mid-air and fell into the building?” and he says ‘No, one flew into one and one flew into the other.”
So I knew it was terrorism. In the elevator going to my apartment I’m thinking about a 1945 photograph from when a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building. You hear that a plane crashed into the Empire State Buidling and you’re amazed and then you see the photo and it’s only a tiny hole. So that’s what I’m visualizing.
I get to my apartment and my wife left a note that said ‘Go to the roof.’ So I go to the roof and there’s a crowd of people, many of them with cameras.
And I see the jagged orange line across the entire North Tower.
And my brain starts running through rescue scenarios – maybe they can land helicopters on the roof or something. And eventually I conclude that everyone above the orange line is going to die and I suddenly feel ashamed that I’m staring. So we go back to the apartment.
The rest of the day was punctuated by shock and awe. Learning that those were commercial liners, learning that the Pentagon was hit (and wondering if we were at war with China), seeing the towers fall, waiting on line to give blood at St Vincents. But no one needed blood.
Going to a supermarket that evening. No one said a word. Everyone was thinking about how the rest of their life would be different.
The first flyers went up the next day (that, by the way, imho, is what the Memorial should look like – photos of people holding kids, people laughing at parties, on flyers, where someone who loved them scrawled “Have you seen?” hastily).
And bit by bit we learned of friends and colleagues who were ‘involved.’
I’ve driven past Gabreski Air Force Base in Suffolk County, New York many times. There’s a jet fighter on permanent display, on which it is painted “NEW YORK AIR GUARD.” There’s one in front of Westchester Airport as well.
I used to understood that to be a promise of protection. Now of course it’s obvious that it’s meaningless.

Wired: “Fraudster Who Impersonated a Lawyer to Steal Domain Names Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud”
“A Nevada man pleaded guilty Thursday to his plotting to steal URLs from their legitimate owners by impersonating a California intellectual property lawyer and send threatening letters to domain name owners in hopes of convincing them to turn over the domains to him.
Las Vegas resident David Scali registered the email address trademarkinfringement@netzero.net in 2006 and then, pretending to be a real Califonia lawyer (whose intials are K.Y.C.), threatened domain name owners with $100,000 trademark infringement suits, unless they transferred the domains within 48 hours.”
Practice pointer: Very often a domain name registrant will justify a refusal to acknowledge a demand letter by pointing out (correctly) that there is (some amount of) fraud regarding domain names. When sending a demand letter, do not rely on email alone, and provide verifiable contact info. If acting on behalf of a client, when communicating with the registrant by email, visibly cc the client by email (with the client’s permission, after discussing with the client the pros and cons of so doing).

Leonard Lopate show on WNYC:
“In Deluxe, Newsweek writer Dana Thomas tells the stories behind the world’s most famous luxury labels: how they came to be, why consumers love them, and where they fit in today’s global economy.
Purchase Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster at amazon.com.
Weigh in: Have luxury goods lost their luster?”