If you’re like me, you’ve spent at least a few minutes today thinking respectfully about the events of September 11, 2001. Depending on your political or ideological bent, you may have any number of thoughts on the way the world and our country especially have changed since that day. Also, like me, you might be actively avoiding any number of made-for-TV rememberences, dramatic or documentary or otherwise. Or perhaps you’re watching every possible retrospective and washing it down with reruns of Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke” because you just bought too much sale kleenex.

On September 10, 2001, I secured my first Sacramento apartment in preparation of my move here, and drove back to my sister’s rural Watsonville home where I stared at the scary blackness out the window and worried about crazy men with axes and the lack of anyone around to hear me scream. By the next night, I was grateful for the distance between me and immediately antiquated urban comforts.

On September 10, 2001 I could have taken a tour of the Capitol’s dome. There were no metal detectors nor x-ray machines guarding the door. There was no metal barrier going up. I didn’t pause to worry if photographing tall buildings would make people look at me funny. But those changes are small - at least compared to the psychic changes that are far more nuanced.

It seems to me that no corner of America refuses its piece of 9/11 pain, whether it has earned it or not. It touched us all, but it only touched a few thousand. Every city lists - with pride - its possible targets; 2 cities were targets.

Did Sacramento really change? Has California at all? Have you?