Liar's Poker and 9/11

This is something of a mixed post so bear with me. The first reference to Liar's Poker reflects that last night my journey home was something of a nightmare. A tree had taken out the overhead wires on my line and trains were badly disrupted.

When I eventually got on a train going in the right direction, I at with some football supporters off to watch West Ham and Spurs. To pass the time they started playing Liar's Poker, essentially bluffing on the serial numbers of bank notes. It is years since I have seen that played and in fact I doubted anyone did so any longer. It was the title of a book by Michael Lewis (1989) and seen to capture the excesses of bond traders and salesmen on Wall Street. If you haven't read the book I would suggest you do. It is not a hard read and a reminder of many things that were bad in the system and that we are still trying to fix.

The second part of the title relates to my visit this last weekend to Ground Zero and the new memorial garden. My family and I have been to New York a number of times just before Christmas. We went before 9/11 and then again in December 2002. While not visiting each year when we have been there we have always visited the site and shared some of its journey.

When we first went they were still clearing debris and the little church of St Pauls, where many of the rescue workers received support and succour, was still surrouned by railings festooned with tributes. Inside it was a functioning church but still full of the memories and memorabilia from that dreadful yet inspiring time.

The railings were cleared some years ago and the inside of the church better organised. The intention being to use many of the items inside a museum, that has now been built but will not open until Spring 2014. The residual presence of material from that time is still poignant, making a visit to the church an emotional event for most visitors (myself included).

When we looked back we had not been to the site for three years and this year we found new towers had risen into the sky and the memorial garden was now open. We queued and went through a full security check to get into the garden where we found the two "pools". These are the footprints of the two towers. Around the edge of the two pools the name of each victim is cut out from the metal. A white rose is placed by each name on their birthday, but something that touched me more were the names where clearly someone (or many) had stood there tracing the names with their fingers. For these names the edges of the cut has work to shine with the patina removed showing the metal underneath. They are clearly not forgotten.

The pools themselve are vast with water cascading down the sides from the edges to a pool level that at its centre has a well that the water then falls down. It was not possible to see the bottom of that well.

In that garden too is the one tree that survived the collapse of the towers. It was an eight foot stump when it was removed from the site and nurtured back to health. It suffered an uprooting during a subsequent storm, but survived that too. It is now known as the "Survivor Tree".

Somehow it all felt very apporpriate. I did wonder if this was closure and the end of our journey with tragedy of 9/11, but I suspect not. While I did know of people killed in the collapse I did not actually "know" anyone, but that day I watched it live on TV and it is something that will never leave me. I think it likely that I will visit every time I am in New York as there will always be something to gain from the experience.