So you got my moderately deep thoughts on the year since September 11, 2001 the day before the first anniversary. Now you get my reactions to that anniversary the day after. At least I'm not running the orange terror alert across the page.

In the aftermath of doing almost everything wrong, baseball proved it could do something right in the way they marked the day. From the afternoon remembrances to the moment of silence at 9:11 p.m., very nicely done.

What was odd for me, though, was that the Yankee Stadium organist played during the moment of silence, making it sound like your local funeral home. The PA guy also spelled out what was going to happen in the pre-game ceremony in detail, which made it seem like less a memorial and more like color guard practice. Yes, even in times of national sorrow I can find some way to rip on the Bombers.

But I do have to give props for them replacing the creaky "God Bless America" with "America the Beautiful." I also like as a funkier alternate choice "This Land is Your Land," even if it is communist agitprop. As much as I like the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," I'm happy to see it's not been trotted out at ball games.

I became officially overloaded on coverage at 7:02 a.m. After being subjected to close-captioned coverage while working out, I got home to hear Matt Lauer say that at 7:02 a.m. one year ago, Mohammed Atta was somewhere on his path to imfamy (I don't remember where, thankfully). At that point I figured I had the rest of the day off from coverage.

(An aside: Katie Couric looks like hell. Her hair is colored some shade which clashes with her skin tone, and her face is looking a bit slack. Can't tell if it's make-up, lack of sleep, nature taking its course, or too much tanning. I don't judge her from her appearance, though; I've always thought she was a hack.)

I did watch enough of CNN this evening to see Ralph Kershaw's name scroll by. Ralph was from my hometown, Manchester MA. He was on United 175. I didn't know him well, but if there's any part of this thing that gets to me, it's the simple fact that our little jerkwater berg could be affected directly. You never know.

If I have to hear Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" morning, noon, and night every September 11 from this year forward, the terrorists have won.

Clear Channel let its radio stations play commercial-free. Nice sentiment, but I have to figure it meant KISS-108 (Boston's most strictly programmed Top 40 radio station) played its song list every 35 minutes.

I should have mentioned this much earlier, but take a gander at Bill Biggart's Final Exposures, a photo essay from The Digital Journalist. I used this as the basis of a photo display on campus yesterday (thanks to Dirck Halstead who wrote the article I linked to), which I hope got people thinking.

How many people saw Yahoo's tribute - they greyed out their home page - and thought their monitor was broken?

While flipping around, I did catch about a minute of a ceremony at Battery Park involving representatives from every country that lost someone at the World Trade Center- 91 of them. That's a part of the story that you don't hear much about. The US lost the most, but the attack was an affront to the global community.

The AdCouncil ran a great PSA showing people of all ages and ethnicities saying the same thing: "I am an American." It closed with that motto you see on all the coins: E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. Damn straight.