Patriotism... of the non New England persuasion

D and I had decided to use last Saturday (I know, I'm a little behind here) to head down to Ground Zero. We thought, Hey, we live here... we should definitely go at least once. People we talked to advised us against it. "Its just a big hole in the ground," they said. Nevermind that, we still wanted to go. So we did.

Our friends were right. It IS a big hole in the ground. The most incredible, sobering big hole in the world.

So, since there used to be two huge towers here, the site takes up about an entire city block. You can see in the pictures that everything around the street is heavily blocked off so people can't see in. Every so often you could catch little glimpses in. We walked all the way to the back, where there is a PATH station (train to/from New Jersey). The station used to go right into the World Trade Center, but after 9/11 a new station was rebuild right next to the sight. The sides of the station are metal grating, which are covered by huge construction-style blankets. Where two blankets overlapped, there was usually something securing them together so people couldn't peek through, but we found a spot where we could pull back the blankets a bit.

In the pictures, you can see a bunch of construction equipment working at the bottom of the pit. Apparantly, the 'excavation' stage is complete and all work is being done on creating the memorial. I don't buy that... Its pretty obvious from the pictures that there is still quite a big of debris and building material that needs to be removed.

The plan for the memorial is pretty neat though. The whole site is going to be full of trees and benches, and it should be nice and peaceful. There will be a museam/memorial building, and two fantastic waterfall things. Basically there will be 2 square recessions into the ground, one where each building stood, and water will flow down into these holes. In the center of each hole there will be an opening where water flows down, and they will go down pretty deep. From the plans, it looks like a pretty fitting memorial.

In NYC you find a lot of tributes to 9/11. As you would epect, every fire and police station in the city has plaques, statues, etc. The really touching things, though, aren't at police stations. The most meaningful things are the ones you stumble on while walking down the road, like D and I found near SoHo. There is an intersection that has 3 through streets, so one corner is quite thin. There is nothing in the space between the streets; its just been fenced off. And along the fence, the entire length on both sides, we found this:

Its a project that has been going on for years in memory of 9/11. Basically, anyone can create and send in a tile and it will be put up on the fence. People from all over the US and world had sent in all sorts of tiles... Some have names of lost loved ones, some have inspirational messages, some say "God Bless America", some are just pictures.

And my favorite...

The red one with the blue writing... it says "Love is the Answer"