Kindergarten and Ground Zero

Isabella still isn't completely sure about leaving Dad's knee in the morning to go into her Kindergarten class. But by the afternoon she's forgotten all about it and is having a ball at the playground with her friend Leila.

Plot and Duck rode the A train in from Brooklyn to walk around the Ground Zero Memorial, but the fact is there is so much construction going on you can't get in to see the reflecting pond without a reservation made three months in advance.

But it doesn't really matter. The new tower going up is very, very beautiful.

It will, by itself, take the place of the old towers, and the memorial will be there to keep the events alive. But it is not the building nor the political events that stun you down here. It's the juxtaposition of this enormous tribute to man's technological prowess in early 21st Century America next to St. Paul's Church, the oldest continually occupied building in Manhattan, where George Washington went to worship right after he was elected President.

The old tombstones are weathered and for the most part illegible, but the ones you can still make out are their own memorials -- John, son of John and Jane, age 1 year 7 months. General Lapideaux, Hero of The War of Liberation. His wife Ann. Many others whose names can no longer be read. The markers are still there, but for who?

Imagine a time when all of Manhattan looked like this. And here is how it looked a month or so after the attacks.

The construction noise is just about overwhelming. Imagine the loudest street sounds you've ever heard -- this is the sonic base line at Ground Zero now. It never gets quieter, probably not even at 4am. There are a few protesters singing songs out on Broadway, but nobody really seems to understand why they are there are what they are protesting. Meanwhile, it's business as usual along the old cobblestones of Wall Steet and Liberty Street and John Street and Ann Street and Broad Street and Maiden Lane, and down by the river where they've built new financial towers. Business as usual is strangely reassuring down here.