My wife and I traveled up to New York City for Labor Day weekend, and we made sure to visit the 9/11 Memorial. I hadn’t been to the site of the World Trade Center since before 9/11, but I’ve been wanting to visit it – and pay my respects – for years now. Here are some photos of the site and its immediate surroundings as it looks now, with new buildings going up all around, and the powerful, emotionally evocative memorial at the center of it all, in the footprints of the Twin Towers.
At one level, it’s mind boggling that it’s been 11 years since that traumatic day, 9/11/01. On another level, though, it feels like it happened yesterday. To think that in this place of gleaming new towers, hotels (we stayed right across the street, at the Club Quarters hotel), life, tourists, commerce, and just generally a bustling city, that one of the worst things that ever happened to America took place here 11 years ago…it’s hard to process.
One thing I’ll say, regarding the whole controversy over the Islamic cultural center, is that when you walk around this area, you quickly realize that there’s all kinds of activity buzzing around within a few blocks of “Ground Zero,” that it’s certainly not cordoned off as some sort of cemetery or whatever. The concept that there can’t be a peaceful cultural center for Muslims several blocks away from “Ground Zero” is absurd from a distance, even more so from up close. That’s simply not what New York City is all about. It’s also not what America’s all about.
With that, here are the photos.
UPDATE: Great news (and about time!) – “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says an agreement that paves the way for the completion of the Sept. 11 museum has been reached a day before the 11th anniversary of the terror attacks.”
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