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Manhattan Sinks – A personal account of September 11, 2001

I wrote this the night I got home from Manhattan on September 11, 2001.  I worked in Manhattan at the time, about ten blocks north of the World Trade Center.  The train I took from my home in Jersey City, New Jersey, would arrive beneath the World Trade Center, and I'd walk from there.  I cleaned up the piece a few days after I wrote it, but this is pretty much what I remember. I also remember how we used to refer to what happened on that day.  We called that day "Tuesday" for the first week, because that's what it was.  Then "last Tuesday," once next Tuesday came around, and then "the eleventh".  I don't remember hearing the term "9/11" until almost a month later.  I've never liked the term, and I still refer to it as "September 11".  This might seem like a picayune point, only of mild interest to linguists, but I think it shows how we were trying to sort out what had happened.  It was a tragedy, to be sure, but the