What Do I Remember Most about 9/11?

Honestly? The smell in the New York office of National Review.

It was unmistakable smell of barbecue. A smell isn’t an image, but no image has never quite captured what happened there that morning like that smell did.

That reliable AOL Instant Messenger that kept communications going when phone lines were overloaded. Learning Barbara Olson had died.

The Missing signs. NR’s offices are just a few blocks from one of the gathering places for people looking for information about someone who had been in one of the Towers and had not yet been heard from, who in many cases never would be.

The candles lit on Lexington Avenue.

The open doors of churches.

The applause that would break out at the sign of a rescue worker who had so obviously been down there.

An actual line of applause on 42nd Street in Manhattan for President George W. Bush, on Friday.

The Cross.

Some thoughts from the tenth anniversary.