I wasn't there

By Michael Chevy Castranova: I wasn't in NYC on Sept. 11. I was at a newspaper in Michigan, trying to convince staffers that we still needed to meet our deadlines that day.

But I couldn't help thinking about my friend the cartoonist, who'd sent me a post card emblazoned with exclamation points, boasting about the apartment he'd just scored on 42nd Street. And another friend, a magazine illustrator, only recently had shown me around her tiny loft fronting Washington Square Park.

I wondered about my favorite bookstore of all time, the Strand, at Broadway and Eighth Street. And I recalled the last time I was in the World Trade Center, when we bypassed the massive lines and took the restaurant-only elevator up, then skipped through without ordering anything - all so we could get to the observation deck.

And I remembered the first time I'd ever been in New York, as a college freshman, riding the overnight Greyhound into Port Authority.

I wasn't there on Sept. 11. But I understand why so many of us feel almost as if we were.

Editor's note: Michael is now the business editor of The Gazette.