NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2010
True Colors of 9/11
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/14/earlyshow/main6865277.shtml
“Just a Minute”: Harry Smith’s Daily Commentaries on News and Issues of the Day
(CBS) I was on my roof here in New York Friday night hoping to get a look at the tribute in light. Two white beams that shoot to the sky from the World Trade Center site around the anniversary of 9/11. My view downtown was obscured. But, I could see the Empire State Building awash in green lights. Yes, bright green. The buildings lights are a color code for all kinds of holidays from Fourth of July red white and blue to Christmas, red and green. But all green? It’s not St. Patrick’s Day. Then it hit me. Of course, the end of Ramadan, The Eid Celebration — one of the most important times on the Muslim calendar. While the world was wringing its hands over the Koran burning threats of a fringy preacher from Florida, the mainstream message from the most recognizable landmark in New York City was one of inclusion. Our true colors shining through.

9/11 Tribute Lights Detour Migrating Birds
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/09/14/911-tribute-lights-spells-trouble-for-migrating-birds/
The two beams of light rising from Lower Manhattan in a ghostly tribute to the World Trade Center towers intermittently went dark during last week’s Sept. 11th anniversary. The reason: to free thousands of confused birds. It may not have been obvious to casual observers that the shapes flitting through the light beams were, in fact, baffled birds on a detour from their normal migration path. The brief outages were likewise easy to miss for most onlookers. On Governors Island Saturday night, however, where an outdoor concert coincided with the anniversary, the sudden disappearance of the nearby lights drew the instant attention of the crowd.

New York Audubon kept watch over the tribute lights, according to a report on Animal Planet’s website. The group asked the Municipal Arts Society, which operates the Tribute in Light, to turn off the lights whenever the number of birds swirling in the beams became too great. The danger to the migratory birds — mainly warblers and threshes, according to Audubon — comes from the depletion of energy reserves, which could prevent them from reaching their southern destinations. (The birds were en route from their Canadian breeding grounds to the Caribbean, South and Central America.) As the Animal Planet report notes, the last time bird migrations overlapped with the tribute was 2004: “[B]ecause of the ways birds navigate the skies, and the way local weather affects their migration routes, these large numbers of migratory birds do not always pass through NYC on September 11th.”