The crawl across the bottom
The crawl across the bottom of Fox 5 News this AM tells me that Mayor Bloomberg is going to announce the end date of the Ground Zero cleanup efforts as June 11. Nine months of cutting, hauling, digging, recovering, and bagging. I spent a few moments at the window, looking out at the southern section of the site. The hole is flat-bottomed now; they've exposed the gray concrete floor of the basement. Traffic moves busily along the fresh blacktop of the West Side highway. The pedestrian bridge that runs North/South from the Financial Center tower has been repaired - they've chosen some sort of dark red material to clad it. The top of the East-West bridge that crossed over the West Side highway, and was just across the street from the South Tower of the trade center, is still a mass of plywood boards.
Last week I walked along the street next to the small park between Broadway and Church Street, which had been full of trailer-offices and construction equipment. All that's left are a few small trailers. Peering through the green fabric that covers the chain link fence, I could see the neat squares of dirt, where forty-eight trees used to be, shading the broad, fat steps that ringed the park and served as seats for the lunchtime crowd. The concrete of the steps is shattered and scarred from being bashed into by trucks and other equipment. The bronze statue of the man with his briefcase that spent the past few months perched against a trailer wearing a gas mask is gone now, along with the black marble bench that he sat on before that. I hope they'll replant the trees, and I hope they don't skimp and plant little saplings, but bigger, more mature trees. Saplings would be too sad.
I don't really have anything to offer, other than those descriptions. Life goes on, I suppose. Forces of history converge. People die.
And deaths are avenged.
