525,600 Minutes.

What is it about anniversaries? How do you measure a year in the life?

Katrina. September 11. The 10th year of RENT on Broadway.

I'm fascinated by our fascination of celebrating the passing of time. In our classic, good ol' American short attention span style, we'll remember just how much has happened and how much better off we are now than one year ago. Or are we?

The footage from Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" on HBO haunts me. So much of the suffering that the people of New Orleans went though was kept under wraps. I guess so we could focus on the real enemy. Insert your favorite enemy here. Thank you Spike Lee. Oh, and special thanks to hottie Anderson Cooper for bending the rules of television journalism (rules?) and showing us just a bit of the horror that happened in September 2005. Even today, the streets have no name and a great American city is dying, before the eyes of our channel switching public. Great line from the no-hit wonder but great band of the 90s, HUMAN RADIO: "They tell me to reach out and change the world. So I reach out. I reach out and change the channel." I am humbled by the thousands of people who put their own lives on hold to go help the good folks of New Orleans. Almost like the spouse at a funeral-- once the water went away, our attention went with it.

And then there's 9/11/01. I read recently in one of my favorite magazines THE WEEK (www.theweekmagazine.com) that only 60% of American adults surveyed remembered that 9/11 actually happened in 2001. Are you serious? I remember the times of each crash and the flight numbers. I remember everything I did on that day. OK, I might be a bit over informed. Or obsessed. THE WEEK also asked me the question "how much safer are we?" just five years after that day. I'm thinking we're much more aware that so many people don't like Americans. Aware, yes. Safer? I hope so. NYC is forever changed, and there's still that hole in the ground that we just can't seem to figure out what to do with. But it's cleaned up. Except for the dust in the lungs of the rescue workers.

In the meantime, Jon and I are headed to Spain. And we fly out on 9/11/06. Check back here for pictures and great stories.