9/11 in Review

I'll keep this brief. I didn't have a chance to see any of the tributes yesterday (or the news reports for that matter), as I had prior commitments. So, I spent this morning reviewing the day's events and related material.

Following are some of the highlights from my review.

The Story of Michael Ragusa's Burial

You'll have Command+F or Ctrl+F and search 'ragusa' to find his story in this lengthy article, as I can't directly link to it. This was probably the most moving tribute I read leading up to yesterday. (Photo above courtesy of IBTimes.com.)

NYTimes.com Photos: Remember September 11

It's safe to assume The Big Picture will post its photographic roundup of 9/11 sometime soon (probably today), but until then, this NYT slideshow is an excellent substitute.

BrainPOP: September 11th

If you've got young children in the home, supplement their understanding of the events on 9/11 with this 5-minute educational piece.

Side note: I've extolled the virtues of BrainPOP here before, and I'll do it again. If your kids aren't watching the BrainPOP Featured Movie daily on iPhone or iPad, they're missing out. I came back from my trip to NYC after visiting with charity: water, explaining how they drill wells to reach underground aquifers. At that point, they stopped me mid-sentence: "Yeah, we already know about aquifers. We learned about them in a BrainPOP movie."

Found Artifacts at the 9/11 Museum

Beautiful storytelling. Can't wait to visit the museum in a few weeks. (Register for tickets here.)

NYTimes.com: The Reckoning

Another lovely example of online storytelling, far more replete than the previous example.

I'm Glad We Didn't Have Facebook or Twitter on 9/11

Cord Jefferson, Senior Editor of GOOD:

When it was all said and done, when we were all done sharing our bilious aggression and dime-store punditry with our friends and followers, then would have come the saddest part: the online memorials. Unsure of what to do with the anger and melancholy that had welled up inside of us, many of us would have made our Twitter avatars and Facebook pictures cheap, simple images of "freedom," and offered up groan-worthy platitudes about democracy and the American way. Paris Hilton would have weighed in on the biggest terrorist attack in modern American history, and thousands of people would retweet her, mostly ironically. We would have thought that we were doing justice to our thousands of countrymen who had fallen. In reality it would have been simultaneously too much and not enough.