One of the advantages of homeschooling is that it is easy to change the schedule to accommodate special events. On Monday morning we did just that. Jack Hidary, whose campaign for mayor of New York we have been supporting, was organizing a visit to the 9/11 memorial. None of us had been and so we all went. The evening before we talked with the kids – who were 1.5, 1.5 and -0.6 at the time – about 9/11. They clearly had picked up a lot from past conversations as they were well with the basic outline of what happened.

The visit itself was fascinating. For me it helped bring back powerful memories of the day simply by making the time and space for it. With an otherwise crazy busy schedule it is far too easy to simply suppress these. Also it is hard not to be impressed by the sheer size of the waterfalls and pools below them. The museum itself hasn’t opened yet (and apparently won’t until next year) but by the sounds of it will have quite a few artifacts in it. Judging the site without the museum is a bit premature but there were several moment where it felt too much of an “attraction” (walking past a gift store on the way out didn’t help with that). The best way to counteract that was reading the stories of individuals such as Daniel Lewin or Welles Crowther.

Part of our discussion the night before visiting the Memorial and also afterwards was what has happened since 9/11. In particular it is important to connect the discussion of surveillance and of wars back to this origin. I have stated on this blog many times that we have far overshot in our reactions. Yet as a citizen of New York it is hard not to see just how soft and juicy a target this dense and soaring city of ours is. A tough setup for a rational discourse. Yet that is what we most need.

Curious what (if anything) others have been discussing with their children (here in New York and elsewhere).