Visual of why Greenland will serve as an important security barrier for us from threats across the world.

I'd rather have a smart than a dumb older sibling. I take my crayon-eating role very seriously

My engagement with X posts are going down. It's annoying getting so many Community Note notifications on my DM.

I’ve been thinking about what happens to the balance between safety and liberty when the people making those decisions are living in fear themselves. I was living and working in the DC area in the early 2000s. For us, 9/11/01 was the beginning of a year of terror. We were still trying to understand the attack at the Pentagon and wondering where Flight 93 had been headed. Then the anthrax letters started arriving with frightening messages: “09-11-01. You can not stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is Great.” At the time, it was hard not to think the terrorists had missed the Capitol on 9/11 and this was their follow-up. Even though the letters were addressed to the Hill and news organizations in NYC, postal workers were getting sick and dying. If you think COVID made people afraid of surfaces, you did not live through that mail. We were all trying to move on by the time the 1st anniversary of 9/11 rolled around and the anthrax investigation had started pointing to a domestic source. Then came the 3rd wave: the DC sniper. People started getting shot while doing the most ordinary things like mowing the lawn, pumping gas, or walking through the parking lot. A 13-year-old boy was shot at school. The shootings on the 1st day happened along the route between my house and work. We were all suspicious driving alongside any white commercial van or truck. I still remember the contortions we went through just to pump gas while trying to stay hidden, and some mornings, traffic across the region ground to a halt because of checkpoints. That's how we lived for those three weeks until the snipers were captured. The year of terror eventually ended, but it happened in a place where the people writing our laws were also living through it. 25 years later, I can’t help but wonder: How differently would we have balanced security and liberty after 9/11 if the people making those decisions hadn't spent that year feeling vulnerable themselves?

Never forget 🇺🇸

9/11 was the day when our childhood ended and the terrorism era began. It wasn’t that America had never been hit. We’d seen the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City, and the USS Cole. But “terrorist” and “terrorism” was not a word that lived on television all day, every day. We all personally felt like we were under attack that day because it seemed like every minute there was a new threat. Living in the DC area made it worse. After the Pentagon was hit, the speculation went everywhere. Bombs at the Capitol. The White House next. Another plane still in the air. This was an era with no social media, no YouTube/TikTok/Instagram, or mobile streaming services. There was no text messaging capabilities on our phones. Only half the population had cellphones. When the first tower fell, I don’t think most of us had a category for it. Those buildings were the skyline. You could not picture them coming down on themselves. And then they did, and my brain was unwilling to process that there were countless numbers of people that were in the building when it collapsed. You see, it was still stuck trying to process the jumpers. That was the split. Before, and after. 9/11 is also when “terror attack” became ordinary language. Before that morning, terrorism had names and places far away. After it, the phrase sat on the chyron like weather. Then it kept happening in cities that had felt far from that war. Madrid, 2004. London, 2005. Different countries, same method: civilians on trains and buses, chosen because they were easy to reach. We didn’t just watch landmarks fall. We watched a word take over our life.

It took me three tries to finish the 1st episode of Band of Brothers. There were too many new faces and too many names that I kept getting lost. Episode 2 hooked me for good. The grit. The brotherhood. Easy Company walking through some of the hardest fights in the European theater and still finding a way to look after each other. In March 2011, I had the privilege of attending Major Dick Winters’ memorial in his hometown of Hershey, PA. He was a great man and a great leader, the kind whose humble and capable authority made following him feel natural. Seeing Babe Heffron and Wild Bill Guarnere there, still standing with their brother, is something I will never forget. They weren't characters. They were the real thing. Currahee.

It’s September 1. That means covered bridge season is almost here. 🍂 Soon the leaves will change, the temperatures will drop, and century-old wooden bridges will become some of the most photographed structures in town. Funny how that works. We spend all year chasing what’s new. Then every fall, we drive miles out and channel our best Meryl Streep/Clint Eastwood love story to admire something that’s been standing for 100+ years.