I’ve never had a strong opinion one way or the other about New York Times columnist Gail Collins, but in her editorial on Thursday about the pettiness and insanity surrounding this year’s September 11 anniversary, she wrote something that really resonated:

“My memories of Sept. 11, 2001 are still intense, and they are mainly about the outpouring of concern from the rest of the country. The piles of donated clothes and food, unused but not necessarily unwanted since each bit was a token of someone else’s good will toward the city. Helping us achieve that state of public grace is the highest possible duty of every elected official.”

I also just heard Mayor Bloomberg being interviewed at the memorial ceremony held down at Ground Zero this morning. WNYC asked him how New York has changed in the past nine years, and he talked about the realization – both for New Yorkers and for Americans in, say, a tiny town in the Midwest – that we all cherish the same things, and there’s a lot more common ground than we realize relative to the rights and freedoms granted by the Constitution. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but his was clearly a message about cohesion and solidarity, and about that brief moment of public grace.

It’s a phrase that is going to stay with me.