I woke up to an anxious phone call from my mother on the morning of September 11, 2001 in my diverse neighborhood of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York.

I was a graduate student ready to work on my thesis for the day. Instead I ran down to the East River several blocks away to see if the images of burning buildings and trapped people on television were real. I could hear more sirens than I'd ever heard before as other people with the same idea scurried towards the waterfront. A smell of something like burning tires filled the air.

I was not prepared for what I saw across the water. With video camera in hand, I watched the buildings burn and eventually collapse. I recorded the chaos around me with my neighbors both known and unknown. The panic and uncertainty grew as several men shouted that now a bomb was exploding in front of us. Though the "bomb" was just the rising smoke, we stood and watched the concrete island as fighter jets began to zoom overhead.

As a New Yorker, I was never really able to pause and reflect on this day and what I saw. Though the memories kept me awake night after night or haunted the few dreams I did manage to have, it was back to work for me...back to business...back to my thesis, my classes, my two teaching jobs...one only 2 neighborhoods from Ground Zero.

This web piece will take you where I was standing just a year ago. Here we can pause, watch, listen, and remember the moment as it happened.

Here, no matter where we are on the planet, we can all stand together.

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