Nine years ago, for most of America, our world changed.  Here in Annapolis, Maryland, a stone’s throw from Washington D.C., where many friends and neighbors work in the city and metro area, a common question is “Where were you on 9/11?”  By a strange twist of fate I was working in D.C., no more than 50 yards from the White House.  It was a horrible and frightening day that included a White House bomb squad lined up on Pennsylvania Avenue and half a dozen binoculars sweeping the sky.  As I was trying to get my head around what what going on and leave the area I asked a Secret Service agent what they were looking for.  The answer- another plane.  Incomprehensible.

And yet the question most pressing to me right now is not where I was then but where I am now.  Yes, the world changed that day.  But my world has changed many times since then.  I married an amazing woman, I have two young sons, I started my own business.  I have a dog.  I crashed a car.  I went to graduate school.  I published my first fiction.  To say the things I think and care about today are different from what they were almost a decade ago is a vast understatement.

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