Watching the Sunset (Feature) Mass Privatization of Philadelphia Schools Worries APAs (in National News) Report Released on the Plight of the Asian Pacific American Worker (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: ‘Warcraft III’: Blizzard Does it Again (in Business) Fok Leads Golden State to Second Place Finish in Pro-Am (in Sports) From the Director’s Chair (in A&E) Emil Amok: APA Male TV Anchors: Invisibility and Emasculation (in Opinion)

Return to Ground Zero

You sense something is missing as you drive south on the West Side Highway. Tall buildings rise from the New Jersey shore to your right across the Hudson River. Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers whiz by on your left.

Like a giant hand without two fingers, the cavernous structures of New York’s financial district come into view as you slow down near Chambers Street. The blue sky, streaks of sunlight and wispy clouds of the harbor would look normal behind the business district of Boston or Baltimore, but they look out of place here.

Getting in the left turn lane at Chambers Street, you see a sign with words that have been painted over. If memory serves, they used to say “World Trade Center.”

Parking on the street in front of the Korean American take-out store on West Broadway near Park Place, the first thing you notice is the faint odor of something charred. It is intermittent and not strong, but it definitely is there.

Like any other urban commercial district on a Sunday morning, a number of the shops are closed. But something is different. Vendors sit in the hot midday sun at makeshift card tables, offering “I Love New York” postcards, New York Fire Department hats, “Day of Tragedy” booklets, framed pictures of the pre-Sept. 11 skyline and other items that commemorate a day that irrevocably changed this community.

Looking south from the corner of Park Place and Greenwich Street, a giant shrouded building comes into view across a vast open construction pit. A giant construction crane stands quietly off to the left. To the right is the brown-colored phone company building which I used to see every day when I went out for lunch two decades ago from my legal services job at 125 Barclay St. This phone company building also is covered in a red protective fabric which, upon closer inspection, is like a medieval knight’s chain mail vest.

Walking east on Park Place, you get a sense of being caught in a malfunctioning time machine. The news stand sells the latest newspapers, while the card table next to it sells reminders of news from 11 months ago. Vendor carts keep you firmly rooted in the present with the fragrance of honey-roasted peanuts, while the Hallmark Card store on Church Street devotes part of its storefront window to an exhibit of the damage it sustained from dust, wind and water on Sept. 11.

Walking south another block to Vesey Street, you notice a tall black iron fence completely covered by signs, hats, flags, shirts, pictures and flowers. Someone from Manaus, the capital of Amazonia, left a Brazilian flag. French visitors wrote, “New York sera toujours New York” (“New York will always be New York”) on a French flag. Carolyn Pisani wrote a poem for her brother-in-law Lance Tumulty that begins, “If tears could build a stairway / and memories were a lane, / we would walk right up to heaven / and bring you back again.”

Although the messages are rooted in anguish, love and admiration for acts of selflessness and heroism, present-day concerns have surfaced in the 11 months this makeshift memorial has been here on the fence surrounding St. Paul’s Chapel. For example, an Israeli wrote, “Terrorism should not be tolerated anywhere” on an Israeli flag, and someone else scrawled underneath, “And Israel shouldn’t do the same to the Palestinians.” A group from Kyoto wrote, “Peace for the People” on a Japanese flag that is lodged near messages demanding attacks against those who destroyed the Trade Towers.

Whenever there is a break in the messages on the fence, your eyes look past into an ancient church cemetery, where the gravestones are so old that the names are not always legible. Tilted at odd angles and chipped and cracked by the changing of many seasons, these markers remind us of ancestors who passed on without knowing of a Civil War, two World Wars or the present undeclared “War on Terror.”

To get an idea of how old this church is, remember that George Washington — after his inauguration as our nation’s first president on April 30, 1789 — walked the few blocks from Federal Hall on Wall Street to worship here in what was, at the time, the outskirts of town.

Walking a few blocks to the south, you finally see Ground Zero. Surrounded by a chain-link fence, this immense hole in the ground which descends six stories looks just like any other large construction project. A rusty girder left in the shape of a cross and an American flag draped on a building are reminders that this is hallowed ground for the spirits of 3,000 who died almost a year ago on this spot. But the emotional impact here is nothing like the emotions that are raised by a few minutes spent reading the tributes and reflections left on the fence surrounding St. Paul’s Chapel.

As we enter the last month before the one year anniversary of Sept. 11, some politicians, commentators and elected officials have already begun to use the blank slate left at Ground Zero to justify expanded war, more acts of violent retribution and more attempts at peace without justice.

As an alternative, I propose that those who seek the meaning of Sept. 11 start by reflecting on the history in the quiet cemetery at St. Paul’s Chapel and then spending an hour taking in the rich tapestry of human kindness, caring and concern draped on the surrounding fence.

Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at pnash@campaignadvantage.com.