I remember getting an email, I think, (or maybe a phone call) from my father saying a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. I was thinking of a small plane – either propeller or one of the small jets that flew from NYC to Hartford. (The kind you take your luggage out onto the tarmac to board. We turned on the TV and watched as the second jet hit.

You never quite know how much ambient noise there is, until they ground all the planes and the world is eerily quiet. The world became a very strange place for a while.

That was one of those watershed moments when everyone can vividly remember where they were and what they were doing. I was teaching freshmen, and there was a sub in the room next door. He told me about the first plane, and we thought the same as Anne – it was a puddle-jumper. We watched the rest live, and had the TVs on all day. It was only later I found out that my little town in NJ lost 6 people that day. One was a guy who had been in my graduating class. I haven’t been back to Ground Zero since that day.