Surely, today’s anniversary has much more meaning in the Northeast than elsewhere, but, for the rest of the country, people probably remember where they were on that day, much as they do for the Challenger space shuttle disaster and other similar events over the years (I still remember that day in second grade in 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated).

I’ll never forget Sept. 11, 2001 because the terrorist attack occurred on the same day as a massive layoff where I worked at the time – Teradyne. Since the company had major facilities in Boston and the Los Angeles area, the layoffs on the East Coast occurred before the terrorist attacks but, due to the time difference, people had not yet arrived at work on the West Coast, so those layoffs had to be postponed.

In the days that followed, after news of the Boston layoffs had reached California, managers awkwardly tried to address the issue until the West Coast layoffs were conducted about a week later. Also, there was one Teradyne employee on the flight that departed Boston – Peter P. Hashem of Tewksbury, MA, for whom a memorial fund was set up.

We’re off to Yellowstone today for a much needed quick little break. If not for the fact that a little more life gets sucked out of us each and every day as part of the process of trying to get the bank to respond to our short sale offer (it looks like we’ll easily make it to the four month mark in another couple weeks), some items would have been scheduled to appear here later today, but the energy required to arrange that just couldn’t be mustered…

This is the Madison River at Madison Junction where the bison (no, not buffalo) like to hang out, sometimes mixing it up with the elk  – give it a click for a ginormous image.