On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was in bed when my roommate called me on our apartment's landline.

I was working for a newspaper in the mountains of North Carolina and had been writing a story late the night before. With a strange tone that I didn't quite recognize, my roommate said, "Well, I guess it's going to be a slow news day."

"Uh. What do you mean?" I said.

"You haven't heard?" he said. "Go turn on the radio." (We didn't have a TV or internet in our West Asheville apartment.)

The coverage was at first confusing and I didn't understand........

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