This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It is one of my favorite cities. The history, the architecture, the amalgamation of cultures that epitomizes the best of the our country. Of all my trips in recent years, I finally worked up the
courage to go somewhere I’d never been. Even though my old company’s office was a mere few
blocks away and the subway stop would pop me out right by it’s fence, I couldn’t never do it.
The posters, the flowers, the messages attached to the fences. The empty, garish space.
I would just keep walking. In tears…each and every time.
Ground Zero.
Mayor Bloomberg would like us all to call it something else, Liberty Plaza, because that name symbolizes rebirth but it will always be Ground Zero to me. It is a painful title but that emotion
should always be felt on that hallow ground. Too many people were murdered that fateful day
and our world forever changed…it seems cowardly to not acknowledge that feeling.
Reflecting draining pools now fill the space where the Towers once stood. Names inscribed in metal.
It was all surreal. Then we passed the tree. It survived the attacks.
It was that tree that finally broke me that afternoon.