You may not even be aware that it’s Patriot Day. I mean, if you rely on your phone’s calendar, as many people do, to let you know which holiday or remembrance day it is, (real remembrance days, not just the Facebook “It’s National Doughnut Day!”) then you would have no idea that today is Patriot Day.

Mind you, my phone calendar (it’s an iphone) does have all of the Muslim holidays and some holidays of which I’ve never heard, but there is no mention of Patriot Day on my phone for the remembrance of the thousands of innocent people brutally murdered on September 11th. It used to be on there, but sadly, not anymore. Why was it removed? When did this happen?

I used to annoy the girl whom Annie (from my series, Mingling in the CIA) was based on by reminding her that pretty much every day there is a holiday in some country across the globe. I’m not against putting all of the world holidays on the calendar. But if the reason some companies are including only the Muslim holidays is to be “inclusive” and “tolerant”, then by this same logic we would be including Loy Krathong and Songkran, in addition to many others.

Some day, when we no longer see memorials for September 11th on television, a mention on the calendar would be one small way to ensure we remember and teach generations to come about what happened on that September day in 2001. Let’s not forget.

If you’d like to read my September 11th article for OpsLens, please click here.