All were children like your own ...

I have been on vacation the last few days. I started the trip in New York City. One of the best cities in the world. To quote the ad campaign, I love New York!

Anyway, I visited ground zero yesterday. They still refer to it as the World Trade Center on the subway train that took me there.

It was very moving and mind boggling to see the site. In the many years that I have visited NYC, I have never been further south than 34th street. It just blew my mind to not only see the vast open space that is left, but also to try and imagine what awesome buildings once stood there. Buildings I never saw in person but from a distance. A lump stuck in my throat the entire walk around the site and Deborah Boily's voice singing Jacques Brel's "Sons of ..." rang in my head.

But sons of your sons or sons passing by
Children we lost in lullabies
Sons of true love or sons of regret
All of the sons you cannot forget
Some built the roads, some wrote the poems
Some went to war, some never came home
Sons of your sons or sons passing by
Children we lost in lullabies...
So long ago: long, long, ago

...Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own...
Like your own, like your own

The path lead me through the World Financial center, so I went out on to the Esplanade in Battery Park to take a gander at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. As I walked around to Broadway and worked my way back up to St. Paul's Chapel, I took a close look at the buildings still standing in the area. What was it like for the people looking out of those windows? What was it like for the person cutting up to this alley that lead to a Starbuck's? To witness this, to see the fall, to hear it, feel it, live it?

Of course the answers to those questions are incomprehensible for someone like me. I was only a witness thanks to live mass media. I lived it at arms length. They lived it as it swept around them.

I kind of felt a little cheesy deciding to go down to the WTC. Someone was complaining today on TV that it had become a thing for tourists to gawk at. I would have to disagree. It was a profound experience to go down there, witness the area myself and think back on that day. Too think, it wasn't so long ago that we thought only Dec. 7th, 1941 would be the only day that would live in our history in infamy.