Three Blocks Away, Worlds Apart.

I had the pleasure of spending last week in New York City. Despite what you may have heard the people were pleasant, helpful, and the city itself was pretty clean. Having lived in Los Angeles, I think New York has taken pretty good care of itself for an "old girl".

Now, with so much to see and do you can have a hard time deciding where to go first. There were a few "must-sees" on my list and things that if I got to them, I would go see them.

One of my "must sees" was Ellis Island. Due to the events of September 11th, the wait just get to the security checkpoint to board the ferry to Ellis Island was over an hour, ( the same ferry took visitors to the Statue of Liberty as well.) so I decided to not to wait and started out exploring the Financial District and surrounding areas. It was there that I treated to two very different world views.

The first was the "Occupy Wall Street" movement at Zuccotti Park. Well, they may have been occupying Zuccotti Park but, Wall Street was  going about its business and was not disrupted by the protest one bit. The size of the protest was a lot smaller than I was led to believe and the bulk of the crowd was lookie-loos and  the media with a very small amount of protesters. Most of whom were very focused on what they wanted and felt they were entitled to. As Terrasa Monore Hamilton said, "It’s [was the] ‘I deserve it!‘ culture run amok".

I left the "protest" underwhelmed and continued on. I few blocks later I stumbled upon St. Paul's Chapel, at first glance it seemed like just another old church in New York City. I soon found out how wrong I was.

St. Paul's is the oldest church on Manhattan, dating back to 1776. It is about four blocks from Ground Zero and survived the collapse of the Twin Towers intact.

What caught my eye at first was a timeline of the year that the chapel served as an aid and comfort station for the first responders of 9/11. That day the first responders changed into their gear at the chapel and left their clothes and boots hanging on the wrought-iron fence outside. At the end of the day if the boots were still on the fence the first responder had most likely perished in the collapse in the Towers.

Inside the chapel  a memorial and tributes to the fallen now line this historic old church. A more moving sight I didn't encounter the rest of the trip.

In one corner was a shrine dedicated to the men and women who lost their lives in the attacks and in another a small alter where visitors could, to this day, leave a little note or prayer.

To sum up the vast differences of the two sites:

This is what was left behind at Zuccotti Park:



This what was left behind at St. Paul's:



I got the sense that it boils down to this:

For the Occupy Wall Street crowd it was "We are victims, what can you do to help us."

For the men and women of 9/11 it was "We have victims, what can we do to help them."

So close, yet worlds apart.