We walked to the park last evening to see the Towers of Light over Manhattan. It was a clear, cold night, and the visibility was perfect. The skyline: a thousand black skyscrapers studded with tiny lit windows, like jewels. Two narrow shafts of light (almost a single shaft from my point of view) reached straight up from the southern tip of the city into infinity. It didn’t look anything like the actual twin towers, but it was beautiful and powerful—the beams were brilliant, not ghostly, as I had expected. I wish this could be a permanent installation instead of a temporary memorial. But it costs $10,000 per night to keep it illuminated….

A crowd had gathered in the park to stand and watch, much like the crowd that assembled on the evening of September 11 to see the illuminated dust cloud that hung over the city that night. Except for some children who didn’t seem to understand what all the fuss was about, it was a very quiet group. CNN has a picture of the Towers of Light.