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Showing posts from September 6, 2009

Remembering 11 September 2001

Americans remember 11 September 2001 in many different ways. One, but by no means the only way, is to ask, “Where were you on….?” That question appeared on my Facebook account this morning and I intended to make a “comment”. However, Facebook, like similar social networking platforms , is not able to handle too many words and thus not too many thoughts. So, below is what I would have posted had the technology been able to support it: One wonders how many times in one’s life is it necessary to recall where they were on a given date? To be sure, on 7 and 8 December 1941, staff members of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., conducted a series of oral history interviews with people randomly selected as they walked up or down The Mall. The interviews were recorded on “wire” recorders and remain a fascinating source of popular history for the period. For the second half of the twentieth century, those interviews reinforced the habit of asking, “Where were you when. . . .?