Lower Manhattan

This is where all the trouble started (if anything can be said to start at any given point). Anyway, there’s a big hole in the ground here and people from all over the world come to look. Some mark it as the start of something: a first strike in on our own shores, resulting in our “War on Terror”; others see it as a criminal act for which guys should be serving time in jail. Many - both at home and abroad - say that we’re the guilty ones by the way in which we’ve live our lives. We’re still allowed to disagree amongst ourselves about all this – and then cast our ballots.

However it happened (or happens), there’s still a big hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan which some have come regard as the center of the economic engine driving world economies. True or not, no doubt there there’s lots of money here (or is it debt?). It used to be that the highest building in any given town was the church; now it’s the bank. In Lower Manhattan one can hardly see Trinity Church squeezed in between the tall buildings anymore. We’ve all but forgotten that George Washington attended services there. It’s possible that some day we’ll decide to take it down and build another bank. - But wait! There’s still that hole in the ground to deal with. Let’s do something about that one first; just to show them that we still have some fight left in us. But, then again, how do we bring back the dead?

Truth is, we’ve been so traumatized, and we’re hardly in a position to do anything beyond putting up a fence around it so that nobody else gets hurt. Just a few blocks away, life goes on as if nothing ever happened. We’ve even built four waterfalls and billed them as a sign that New York City has moved on.

Still, we’ve felt compelled to build ramps and lookouts at Ground Zero. No tour guide dares to omit what happened here. It seems people from all over the world are coming mostly just to look at that big hole. They think of it as a metaphor of sorts. It’s been a bit unsettling for those of us who wish we could finally decide on something to fill it with - a waterfall, perhaps – and then be done with it.

There’s a Water Taxi that leaves South Street Seaport every hour on the hour. It takes about an hour to cruise around Lower Manhattan, up the Hudson River a ways and back down along the Jersey side to view Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Then it loops around, past Governor’s Island and up the East River. This is the “waterfall” part of the ride. There are four of them. The one just under the Brooklyn Bridge, to my mind, is the most dramatic. Back at the Seaport, there are restaurants and shops. The day we were there, a contortionist was performing on the pier. From there, it’s a relatively short walk down to Wall Street, the Stock Exchange and Trinity Church. Most may want to see the site where the Twin (World Trade Center) Towers stood as well.

Peter Koelliker pkoelliker8@yahoo.com