September 11: New York Lives On
This morning I felt like the Queen of England: I was awakened by bagpipes outside my window. They are part of a 9/11 commemoration at New York City’s firefighters’ monument, which I look at from my balcony. On this grey, drizzly day, members of the city’s bravest have gathered to pay tribute to their colleagues who died on that sunny day eight years ago. After the tragedy, many people around the world said that New York was “finished”. But we weren’t, of course, any more than London was finished after the blitz or Berlin after the Red Army moved in. Great cities keep going: the young and the talented keep moving to New York in search of opportunity, and the old stay here, more and more, because the city and its attractions feed them in a way that small towns and suburbs do not.
