The 21st century version of the all-American question "where were you when JFK was assassinated?" is "what were you doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center?"

Some of us watched the towers disintegrate before our very eyes, our landscape changed forever, and it's a vision, a feeling we will carry inside our hearts for as long as we live. The smell throughout downtown Manhattan, the lines of demarcation -- complete with checkpoints -- between the northern and southern parts of the city but also the newfound sense of camaraderie we bestowed upon each other to merely get from day to day, is also what I remember from those days.