My First Day visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum

That's kind of a pretty design, all those blue tile thingies on this handy wall, don't you think? (Remember about the wall. We'll be coming back to it.)

by Ken

I know we're supposed to talking about China, and what happened to the confident post-Tiananmen prediction of Jonathan Mirsky and, he says, many other China-watchers, Chinese and foreign, that the days of the People's Republic regime were numbered. But yesterdeay was my First Day free appointment to visit the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and I had to write something for the writing workshop I've been doing, for which I knew I was going to be late, on account of, you know, my free First Day visit appointment.

I'm not going to say that what follows, written in the moral equivalent of the 20 minutes we normally have for our writing assignments in the workshop, is the definitive word on the museum. Or even that it's much of a word. But one strong advantage it has is that it's written (assuming I can make out my legal-pad scribbling).

As noted below, one unequivocally good piece of news is that the 9/11 Memorial itself has now been opened to the public, provided you know where one of the entrances is. The one at the southeast corner of the WTC plaza, at Greenwich and Liberty Streets, worked great for me coming, but getting out, when I wanted to head straight east to Broadway to catch the Lexington Avenue express to Brooklyn, I had to walk all the way out of the way to exit out of the northwest corner.

NO DAY SHALL ERASE YOU FROM THE MEMORY OF TIME

The quote is from Virgil, and if it was supposed to be "NO DAY SHALL YOU ERASE FROM THE MEMORY OF TIME," somebody would surely have caught it by now, as it appears in giant letters on one of the more conspicuous, er, spaces, in the 9/11 Museum, a wall of large spaced tiles in various shades of blue. Rather pretty, and possibly having some significance for 9/11. The wall itself does, but it was some time before I discovered it.

Unlike the significance of the long descending stairway alongside which I had just descended to the bottom-most level of the museum excavation, the main level of the museum, most of which is underground. That stairway, which is comfortably nestled between the museum's visitors' ramp and down escalator, actually survived 9/11 intact. It ran next to the long-gone escalator at the north end of the WTC plaza, and the heavy damage now visible to the lower half of the stairway, a sign informs us (if you can read it; it's very dark), was inflicted during the cleanup.

For weeks the appointment was on my calendar -- for 1:30 today [i.e., yesterday], my free First Day visit to the 9/11 Museum. (It's not really the museum's opening, since it's been open to survivors for a week. But it was the first day for the public at large.) And when I signed up for this workshop, knowing that we had to commit to attending all six sessions, I had to mention several times that for the third session I would have to be late, because of this appointment.

I worried that that would make me sound like a 9/11 fanatic, when the truth is that if I missed my free appointment, I would have to pay $24 to get in. Whether that would happen, I don't know. By and large, I think I remember most of what I want to know about the WTC and 9/11. I'm certainly glad I saw it, though, and even gladder that I didn't pay $24.

Oh yes, about that wall with the pretty blue tiles. Eventually I found a sign that explained:

"Reposed behind this wall are the remains of many who perished at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

"The repository is maintained by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York."

I had printed out several pages of information about the museum site, but none of it helped me much onsite, but maybe now that I've seen the joint, I can make some sense of those lovely maps and stuff.

The best thing about the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is that the memorial itself is now open to the public, or at least open-ish, since a good part of the WTC site is still a series of construction sites. So, while there are still people in uniforms all over the plaza, people can now come in fairly freely, without going through the horrendous old security boot camp -- provided they know one of the limited number of plaza entry points.

As for the museum itself, well, it's very nice. There's plenty of information -- about The Day itself, the way the site had been before The Day, and what has happened since. There's a 15- minute movie featuring luminaries like former President Bush, former Mayor Giuliani, and former Governor Pataki. Some of the signs are illuminated, though most aren't, and aren't at all easy to read, especially in dim light. There's a café. There are many rest rooms. And it's very well air-conditioned.

LET ME JUST ADD --

that this is entirely an off-the-cuff and purely personal response to a quick survey of the museum. It's not meant to be a judgment on it. Like I said, it's nice.

For one thing, it may be that my 9/11 susceptibility was curbed by the two full-scale visits I paid to the 9/11 Memorial when it was reachable only through that massive security gantlet. (At least in the museum, once you pass the checkpoint to get inside, you only have to get through a single security check. This seems to me an appropriate part of the museum experience, as a demonstration of how "everything has changed" since 9/11.)

Also, I didn't include the quick list I made of just a few of the 9/11 artifacts on display, like the Ladder Company No. 3 fire truck, the elevator motor (one of the original 99, if I recall correctly), and the portion of the radio-TV antenna.

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