I feel that I must post the obligatory reminder that today is the fifth year anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers.

Iwas actually going to write a lot more about it, particularly how I think that some people really need to get a life and realize that this was not the most tragic event in the history of Planet earth. And I am talking about people who were far removed from the disaster, who didn’t know anyone working at the WTC, didn’t lose any loved ones or even anyone they were remotely acquainted with, or have never even set foot in NY.

I’m not being harsh because I well realize how tragic this event was–as I knew many people who were working that day at the WTC. It is not an event to be forgotten, but when I see people posting things on bulliten boards, such as that they foolish querying an editor today because it is the anniversary of such a tragedy, or apologizing for having to get work done instead of sitting in a dark room and replaying scenes of airplanes tearing a building apart–well, sorry, but I’m missing something.

I don’t know, maybe there’s something wrong with me. In the days immediately following 9/11, I was so upset that I began to feel physically sick. It was so bad that I just retreated from the news and the world with a stack of novels for about two weeks. I got to see the huge hole left behind about 5 months later when I was in NY, and it did send shivers through me.

But five years down the road, I’m more concerned about the genocide that is still taking place in the Congo, where about 5 million people have died since the late 1990s. I still feel sad for the thousands of people of Iran and Pakistan, whose were killed during devastating earthquakes over the past two years. The victims of the tsunami certainly dwarf 9/11. The ongoing war in Iraq, the Vietnam of the Middle East. To me, 9/11 is an event that has taken its place in the annals of man’s inhumanity against man and against the planet.

And what really upsets me is that despite all this talk about the war on terror, and yadda yadda yadda, airport security is no safer than it was five years ago. The same undertrained minimum wage employees are still doing baggage scanning, instead of using well paid and highly trained experts to screen people. Now, wouldn’t that make sense?

But hey, I can’t take my shampoo on board anymore, and I can’t soothe my parched hands with cream while in flight. Now I know that it is going to make air travel a whole lot safer, don’t you think? That mommy can’t take diaper rash balm on board anymore, or that granny can’t carry her prune juice on the plane.