A Perfectly Clear Day 2021

I have on many years posted “A Perfectly Clear Day” on September 11. This 20th anniversary may be the last.

In November of 2001, I was back in New York and went to an exhibition of 9-11 photography. I purchased this print of a photo by Anthony Domino (with proceeds going to victims’ and first-responders’ funds).

It is a beautiful picture of a horrific ruin. I had it framed. But I can’t look at it often. It sits safely in a closet.

As for today, I don’t know that I could express the mixed feelings any better than I did on A Perfectly Clear Day 2018, so I invite you to read that. The thing that is different now is the pandemic. A far larger, far more catastrophic event. And this time I have not been able to go back to New York. I did not go at all in 2020, and whether or not I will be able to go in 2021 remains a question. The fear, anger, and trauma I have in 2020/2021 are no longer turned outward towards an external threat, but rather inward at people in our own country. But that is a story for another, less perfectly clear day.

So much has happened and changed in 20 years. It is time to put this tradition to rest.

Wordless Wednesday: Garden of Stones

As we count down to the start of Passover, we look back at my visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York last November. The Garden of Stones is a living memorial to the holocaust, with an arrangement of trees and stones that complement and contrast the architecture of the building. From this perspective, they also frame 1 World Trade Center quite nicely.