Not that there was any theme to my recent trip to NY than to help with family matters — but I did want to see the 9/11 Memorial.
It’s free, you need to get a timed reservation which cost $2 for processing online; however, the morning I went (Sunday at about 11 a.m.) they were letting people without reservations in and I don’t think there was any wait for it.
As you can see in the pictures, the memorial pools are stunning. It’s impossible to see the bottom of the drain, so to speak, from the viewing areas around the perimeters of the fallen towers’ footprints. So for all you know, they go down to the center of the earth.
Even though there are signs everywhere reminding folks that this is a place where a mass murder happened, there were the usual groups of tourists posing for photos with the dramatic backdrop. Can’t say I blame them, really, as the very act of showing up serves to remember that day.
It is also available in a variety of professional fields, including retail, distribution, architectural, engineering, consulting, manufacturing (union), public sector and both profit and non-profit company structures. cialis online cute-n-tiny.com This type of machine consists of three parts known as shipping free viagra cute-n-tiny.com a motor, mask or tubing. In particular, this technique tends to be one of the most cheapest cialis soft liked flavors of kamagra jelly. Therefore http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/momongas/ purchase levitra it’s better if you’re well prepared.
I took pictures of a couple of names: David Angell, who was a writer/producer on TV shows such as “Cheers” and “Wings,” I had met and in fact interviewed when we both worked on the Paramount lot. He and his wife were passengers in one of the planes that day.
Mark Bingham was a gay man from San Francisco who is thought to be one of the people on Flight 93 who fought the terrorists back. He was well-known in the community, and was involved with the gay rugby team. The night of September 11, a community shrine went up for him (as well as for the other 9/11 victims) at the corner of 18th and Castro in San Francisco.
There’s the new WTC, now topped off and looming over Manhattan, an enormous structure. Then finally, I took a photo of Zuccotti Park, just blocks away. Now cleared of Occupy Wall Street, you’d never even know they were there. I can’t help but feel this is a sleeping giant we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the next few years – and that’s a very good thing.
Thinking about the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I remembered that I wrote out my impressions of visiting Ground Zero in December, 2001, almost three months after the attacks but long before the site had been “cleaned” entirely.
I was living in San Francisco at the time and was in New York for a convention, one that had been postponed from that September. I mainly wrote these for family members (hence the reference to SF and to Milwaukee).
What I heard, what I saw, what I felt, what it was like.
Notes on Ground Zero, December 2001
Took C Train subway down 8th Avenue which stopped at Chambers St. downtown. When we walked up the stairs to street level, first thing I noticed was muddy grey dust all over and that kind of smell in the air you often smell at a construction site (concrete?). Also, there was a burning smell you sometimes got a whiff of. It was a gray day but very warm for Dec. 2, probably mid-50s, probably warmer than SF.
I followed the crowd down the block and we made a right turn down Broadway. On the right you could see the cranes and an immense (I would say, 6 or 7 stories high) pile of rubble that had a lot of girders and steel twisted in circles, like pretzels. I think this was the 47-story building that collapsed late in the afternoon of September 11.
Walking further, I got stuck in the Sunday crowd, which was stopped at an intersection where a large wooden barrier had been erected, like the kind that normally surrounds a construction site. On the barrier were signs, pictures, notes, banners from elementary school children, flowers, incense, baseball caps, ribbons, balloons, candles and other memorial-type items. The crowd there was alternately reading the memorials and trying to take pictures of the devastation beyond, or taking pictures posing with the police officers who were guarding access to the WTC site.
That barrier was adjacent to the building used as a staging area for the rescue/recovery volunteers, so I was able to see them reporting for work or leaving, or getting food and coffee. Lots of people with disposable coffee cups. The sidewalks downtown there are not as wide as some other areas of Manhattan, so there was a lot of pedestrian gridlock. There was a general quietness to the people, not really a hush, but you could overhear parents telling their kids what had happened here, describing the two buildings that were destroyed, and other conversations were about September 11 and what was remembered about that morning.
I walked past Trinity Church which was intact and no longer looked even dusty. Looking in the other direction down Wall Street, I could see the NY Stock Exchange just a block or so away. It is remarkable that it reopened just a few days after the attacks, as it is about 4 blocks away from Ground Zero and these are short, very old streets/blocks and I imagine that the ubiquity of huge stone/brick buildings shielded that area from raining debris.
I walked west on the street adjacent to Trinity Church, and several of these east-west streets are now ripped up for subway repair, as the tunnels under the WTC collapsed and all have to be rebuilt. So these streets were covered with enormous timbers, which is what I remember from Metrorail construction along Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Ave. in L.A. when they were building the subway there. Also, there were a number of rat poison bait-contraptions placed against buildings. I imagine that many downtown rats were displaced by the destruction, and I wonder if being a rat was an advantage that day, if scurrying about in the dark below ground was a ticket to survival. (OK, I am kind of weird, but you know that already.)
From that vantage point, you were mostly free of the crowds and the strollers, because the access was over wooden planks and loose asphalt and harder to get to. I could see fire department hoses shooting streams of water onto the pile of rubble mentioned earlier – not sure if the buildings are still on fire, but I can’t imagine why they would be watering it if not. Some windows in that collapsed building were intact.
Of the WTC itself, all I could see from behind police barriers was that section of the façade still standing which you see in all the news photos. It’s about 3 or 4 stories high and appears to be a corner of one of the buildings – I think south tower. I believe they are going to preserve it as part of a memorial which is why it is still standing.
My final vantage point was from an overpass-type area on West Street (the street that eventually runs along the Hudson River) looking north (so my walk was almost in a circle) and from there I saw the rubble trucks leaving the destruction zone. They were like huge dump trucks and were stopped at the checkpoint and washed down. (Perhaps to get the dust off? So much dust..) I also saw an ambulance leave with lights flashing, no siren, wondering if it was carrying body parts or what. What else would be there almost 3 months after the fact?
What you don’t see on the news is the circle of devastation around the WTC. There is a big hole there, as those two buildings are just gone, but there are enormous structures adjacent, probably bigger than almost any buildings in Milwaukee or SF, that have enormous gashes in them, corners knocked off, evidence of fire, and windows blown out. These have been vacated and reminded me of red-tagging after an earthquake. The circle beyond those buildings is lesser damage, with a number of skyscrapers actually being covered in what looks like tarps – I expect that is so windows and other loose stuff doesn’t rain down into the street. Beyond that, you have the street level, and all the shops that would normally be there – pizza joints, dry cleaners, groceries, hair salons, etc. just shuttered and closed. There is dust everywhere, and those streets are very quiet.
My last view of this was from the Rainbow Room on the 65th Floor of Rockefeller Center, where I went with (note: my aunt, now 90) Joan Arnold for a drink (well, mineral water!) before dinner. From uptown there you could see what looked like a hole in the ground with light rising up from a pit. They work on cleaning up 24 hours a day. I think they have still only recovered a few hundred bodies out of about 3,000.
New York around Rockefeller Center and the Dolby office and my hotel (both on 55th Street near 5th Avenue) seemed mostly normal to me. The big stores have their Christmas windows in, the shoppers were out, and the lights were festive. The skaters and the tree at RC were just as I remember them from other times there at this time of year.
The saddest thing for me to see in NY this trip were the fire station houses you would walk past, all having memorials outside of them and pictures of the firefighters from that station who died that day. These were everywhere and unavoidable. Yet at the same time, there was the usual sirens and careening through the streets of fire and police trucks, the only difference being that the vehicles now fly big American flags.
I was glad to see it, happy to be back in NY, happy to fly again. I can already tell that people are starting to let their guard down a little, which I don’t think bodes well, but you have to live your life too, and it makes no sense to go about worrying about things you cannot control.
Email
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
You must be logged in to post a comment.