The ninth of April is my birthday...

September 11 is my sisters birthday. I remember on 9/11 trying to make her 40th a festive occasion as partygoers could not get their eyes from the tube, me included. I worked across the street from the TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco and felt especially vulnerable. While I was totally against the war in Iraq, feeling that the motivation for it was based on a lie ten years in the making, when the Statue of Saddam came down in Baghdad and it "appeared" the people were celebrating on my birthday, , I thought it was a gift to me in my grief that the war was illegal. I briefly thought the Iraqis actually wanted us there. That was my delusion and I know better as must the world as we are committing a crime and killing indiscriminately as we set the law in THEIR country. Our birthdays will never be the same.

my birthday is September 10th. I remember as a kid thinking how much I hated having my birthday in September b/c with the start of school and making new friends and all, it was always kind of forgotten.

Now, I will forever remember it as "the day before the world changed" on some level.

(Sorry if this is a little off topic, thought I'd share anyway). :)

Our world changed on both of your birthdays.

Kamehameha day in Hawaii.

Well, maybe not. He fought some bloody wars too, but at least he was in those wars, like a "warrior leader" should. At least, one who claims that he was a warrior should.

Veterans/Armistice Day. The end of WWI. Fitting for a peacenik like me, I guess.

I remember my bro's 21st bday was the day the riots began here in L.A. in '92. We were a bit concerned about him being out barhopping, drunk, and completely unaware of what was going on around him in the city.

Last night we were sitting in Hoboken looking over at the New York skyline, forever changed and bereft. He talked about how as a teen he had been able to watch from across the river as the towers went up, and he always felt a personal connection with them. He worked in one for a while, for the Port Authority, and later, whenever he would go into the city he would walk through the plaza before taking the ferry back to Jersey. They were always such a touchstone-- and for them to collapse on his birthday seemed the final irony.

Our current gov't. has used their grief for personal vendettas. One of my managers had a son-in law lost during the blast. Another lost his favorite memories of shopping at Christams time at the towers. A partner with a Big 6 (4?) firm I work with described his harrowing escape from a building near the towers. I felt personally scarred. People I work with lost friends. I blame it on LIHOP.