On the 24th anniversary of 9/11

[Originally posted on my Facebook, 9/11/25]

I took this photo of the NYC skyline from Liberty Island with my photography-class Pentax camera during an 11th grade field trip in 1999.  When developing that roll of film, I somehow messed up the chemicals and part of the film got stuck to itself, and the result was this rather ghostly effect.

Only a few years later that would take on a new poignancy.  I can still see everything from that morning so crystal-clear even 24 years later, down to the bagel I was eating for breakfast.  Before going to class - it was only days into my first semester at Columbia-Greene - I’d turned on my TV over breakfast and saw every channel covering the story after the first plane hit, and the talking heads saying that at that point they could only assume that it was a tragic accident - and then going silent as the second plane hit and it became instantly clear that it wasn’t.

Later, not knowing what else to do, I went to the college, listening to the radio coverage in my Plymouth Reliant over the CD stereo I’d had that old crate retrofitted with.  Of course, by the time I got there classes had been cancelled, but with nothing else to do I wandered into the welcome center in the main building, where someone had wheeled a TV cart in and students and staff were gathered to watch.  I don’t remember much conversation - it was mostly still stunned silence.  And that’s where memory of the day finally gets fuzzy; I don’t really remember how long I was there or even really remember the drive back or what happened at home that day.  But the day up to that point is one I’ll never forget.

This past week, I flashed back to that morning a bit while walking through that same welcome center in that same main building on the way to teach my own class.  Of course, the cart with the tube TV isn’t there anymore, but otherwise the room - and building in general - has barely changed in the near quarter-century that’s passed.

Just about every semester I’ve taught, I pose the question to my class, “why do we study history?”  And almost invariably - and expectedly - the first response is a student paraphrasing the old George Santayana line about "...so we aren’t doomed to repeat it.”  

On that day, 24 years ago, the world was changed forever - and in most ways, not for the better.  But I can only hope that the future does not refuse to change, and in some small way, I can only hope to make some small contribution towards making that possible.

And that, ultimately, is why I teach history.