Trust Me: It Is BIG...

Twin Towers

Catching the train from upstate New York, you can get off at Grand Central Station and easily catch the subway to the last stop at the World Trade Center.

9/11/01: I was in Texas, working as a Product Engineer for Motorola at that time; motion stopped for my coworkers around a TV in the cafeteria. I saw the second plane hit the building. We were transfigured. I almost lost my breakfast when both towers collapsed under their own weight, showering debris below through the streets. The loss was initially estimated in the tens of thousands.

I was angry, outraged, sad: It for some reason made me think of my father. I'd just buried him two years prior from natural causes. I needed to in that moment hear his reassuring voice. I did: inside of me, as I had to then be that steady voice for my own family's fears.

I then later saw that the Salaat Room - a prayer room for Muslim coworkers - was sadly closed due to suspicions based on the hubris of a lunatic fringe that hijacked a faith.

9/11/11: I now live in New York, on heightened alert from a credible threat to New York or DC. We will have a memorial at the church I've joined and attend, far away from the city like Las Vegas that "never sleeps."

I was out of semiconductors before getting back in it almost a decade later, far away from Texas fires and immersed in cutting-edge technology. I haven't even tried to calculate the odds (though for grins, I'm most likely to eventually). I merely accept the blessing, and advise those that are still looking for work, underemployed or unemployed to persevere: I've been unemployed, and wrote a memoir about it; I've worked as a sales rep (if you can believe it - so NOT me, but it allowed me to meet Alicia and Mark Raizen), I've taught martial arts full time, I've worked as a school teacher. It's hard to hear, but DON'T QUIT. Eventually the universe makes way for a determined foe of adversity.

This embed includes Scientific Americans interactive on the essential architectural, engineering and physics facts of the new WTC. You owe it to yourself to visit. It is a monument to the American Spirit; it is a monument to the lives lost this day, the courage of the 9/11 responders...and their families.

"Courage lies in everyone, and one day it must be summoned." Vice President Joe Biden, quoting his mother at the 9/11 memorial yesterday.