“I heard the news on my radio while driving to my dentist behind McCain Mall in NLR to get a temporary filling’s permanent replacement. I got out of the car to make a call at a convenience store (didn’t have a cell phone; still don’t; I hope never will), I think, to let my gf know; I’d left her sleeping in her apartment just a few minutes earlier. We’d had a late night, having gotten in early in the a.m. from seeing the White Stripes play for a few dozen people in a very small club in Memphis. (As my replacement as night editor at the D-G, she’d be in for a loooong day.) Lots more details — many wrong, of course — came over the office radio while I was in the dentist’s waiting room.

“Weird day, needless to say. (Even weirder, in retrospect, when I note that my first cousin wound up marrying the widow of the guy who called her on his cell phone as they were about to take on the hijackers in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.)

“Also, god, yes — what Sarah said.”

“I remember that night how eerily silent it was over our house with no FedEx jets doing the ‘jump’ out of Memphis.

“The victims of 9/11 were entirely innocent, slain purely at random. But have we as Americans really begun to examine why our country was attacked? That’s something I never hear brought up. Perhaps it’s still too soon.”