Saturday News & Notes: Remembering 9/11

My semi-regular look at stuff that catches my eye, now 100% more maudlin and self-reflective.

As 9/11 Museum Opens, These New Yorkers Will Stay Away (NY Times)
"But for some New Yorkers, the memories and stories are already too present, and despite the importance of the museum’s message — and despite its great reviews — they do not plan to visit when it opens to the public next week.

Some people said they did not need a public exhibition to remind them of a personal tragedy that they could not forget."

Count me among those who won't be going.  I'd been living in New York a month when the attacks happened and saw the whole thing from my company's Learning Center, located on the Queens side of the East River, right across from the UN.  My "Prints, Plates, and Diagrams" class was on a break, so along with the rest of my class, I was down on the Center's back deck drinking coffee, enjoying what would otherwise have been one of the nicest days I'd ever spent in New York.

I don't mind saying that the memory still haunts me.  I have absolutely no desire to relive it.

By the time the weekend rolled around, Hoboken was plastered with "Have You Seen This Person?" fliers.  They were on ever vertical surface in the Mile Square.  One poor guy lost his beautiful blonde wife or girlfriend.  I don't know the story.  But he kept putting those posters up for months and months and months.  I bet I saw her particular "Have You Seen This Person?" flier for a solid eight months after the attacks.  I still feel bad for that guy.

Anyway, that was a long time ago.

I worked the phones for the telethon they held right after the attacks, and for awhile I jumped every time I saw a bunch of police cars rushing down the street to get anywhere.  But New York is eight million people and probably a million buildings, and for the most part, the City barely skipped a beat.  The Stock Exchange was out of lights for maybe four days, and I remember distinctly that when the mayor asked folks to go out and shop on Black Friday that year to help the City's economy, my mom came up, and we literally shopped 'til we dropped.  That was a pretty good day.

Eh.  It's fine that they have a museum, but I think it's mostly for the tourists.  Anyone who was there won't need to see it to remember what it was like.

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Trailer for the trailer.  I love it when they do that.

Take a peek at the new #GuardiansOfTheGalaxy trailer premiering 5/19, 10AM PT with a live cast Q&A, only on Facebook! http://t.co/6Xi3g6nupP
— GuardiansOfTheGalaxy (@Guardians) May 17, 2014

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Your Money: A Beginner’s Guide to Repaying Student Loans http://t.co/dnKPGp42O8
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 17, 2014

Student loans are one of the most misunderstood things in domestic economics these days.  I mean, yeah, the universities are making money, but the whole rest of the economy is shuddering under the weight of the loans these kids are taking out before they're even in the mid-twenties.  As a result, they'll be lucky if they can ever afford to put a down-payment down on a house, and that's a huge problem because, in case you missed it, the whole economy is driven by the domestic construction industry.

Not to mention the fact that it's very much an open question as to whether or not the payback on a college education is positive or negative.

For example, I have a friend A____ who just got her first "big girl" job at 27.  It's a good job, and she's good at it.  But instead of looking for a house and a trying to establish an adult life, she's stuck in a tiny apartment--granted, nice location--with $80K worth of school loans, and she still gets occasional help from her parents on some of her bills.  Meanwhile, A____ has a Master's Degree and the career she always wanted.  She ought to be an upwardly mobile professional--and maybe she is--but it's tough to start $80K in the hole, and it looks like it's a struggle.

I grant you, being a 20-something professional probably ought to entail a little struggle, but that to me means not buying a Lexus unless you can really afford one.  It doesn't mean being locked permanently out of the upper-end of the economy because it cost you nearly six figures just to enter the job market.

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'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered in Argentina http://t.co/twuOBNyC1W pic.twitter.com/WzhS5MobYv
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) May 17, 2014

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I'm supposed to be swimming thing morning.  I need to start getting my crap together, but I feel so lazy...