Well...it seems I have taken off a few years from writing in this place...I guess a few things have happened. I had to put my dog to sleep last August...VERY sad and I think about her everyday. I made a book on my Mac and it took me about 3 months to stop crying from just looking at the cover - but now I can smile when I look at the pictures because I remember the moment I took every single one of them.

AND NOW --- in a few days it will be the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I always thought anniversaries were things you WANTED to remember - and this is not one of them. So may I confess to the fact that I don't want to see another photo on the cover of a magazine showing some aspect of that horrible day. And I don't want to see the 500 TV listings of special programs to memorialize the Twin Towers' destruction. And please don't email me anymore EVENT ME selections for opportunities to have celebrities (or any one else for that matter) talk about or read their assessments of that day. Let's instead have a national moment of silence. Ring the bells. Go forward. Because we all have to move on somehow....

I did not know anyone who died - I am probably the only person in NYC who did not - but I smelled the stench and I watched the people walk like automatons up Fifth Avenue - sleeves missing from their $900 suits, no shoes, covered in grey soot as if they were statues coming alive. Silence - not a sound. No one spoke. No one knew where they were or where they were going but they were all going together.

Texans were back to bar-b-queing in two weeks - everything was back to normal. It has never been back to normal here. And you can tell who was here as the September days approach - bluer than blue cloudless skies cause us to look up as a plane flies between the buildings, maybe a bit too low, and we exchange a knowing glance across the street - yes I know...I was here too.

I am sad for those who lost loved ones that day. If I can't get past this what can they ever hope for? No answers from anywhere...it took 10 years to find and kill Bin Laden. So? The government still has not solved the problem of police & fire being able to communicate. Nobody is checking the shipping containers at Newark. Who is guarding the water supply?

And if you think that the person in charge of NYC at that time was a hero watch the Laurence O'Donnell REWRITE video on YouTube from Aug 30 regarding Giuliani.

It will never be over for anyone who was on the island of Manhattan that day or the families of those who were left to grieve. What can we do except..

Say Good Night Gracie....