“Almost from the minute the black smoke and human dust cleared, people began to talk about how to commemorate the event, how to impose a sense of meaning and logic on a moment of blood, fire, chaos and death. Abraham Lincoln had done it in 1863 with just 272 words at Gettysburg, another scene of American destruction, memorializing the dead and challenging the living in a speech that has outlived memories of the battle itself. In this postindustrial and postmodern age, we are using granite, steel, glass, cyberspace, music, film and, sometimes, our own bodies to remember September 11.”