Port Authority executive director Chris Ward told the Wall Street Journal that the September 11 memorial and museum will be "available" by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in 2011. What does that mean exactly?

"What the public sees most importantly in terms of the plaza, the reflecting pools and the waterfall will be available," Mr. Ward says of the memorial's design, which centers on two voids that mimic the towers' footprints. The museum won't be completed and public access remains in question.

Here's The Observer's profile of Mr. Ward in May.

The Times' David Dunlap has details on the latest version of the planned September 11 memorial at the World Trade Center site:

The architect Craig Dykers has been working since 2004 on the design of a museum building for the World Trade Center site. In the end, he realized there could be no more powerful a centerpiece than something Minoru Yamasaki designed 45 years ago.

To an otherwise Spartan design for the twin towers, Mr. Yamasaki, the original architect, added one instantly recognizable flourish: trident shaped columns at the base of the buildings, which created an arcade of almost Gothic proportion. Enough of these enormous steel tridents survived the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, that their familiar silhouettes came to symbolize endurance in the face of catastrophe.

From the Associated Press:

As hundreds of firefighters bowed their heads in prayer, a cross made out of steel from the World Trade Center was dedicated Sunday near where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into the ground on Sept. 11.

The 2-ton, 14-foot high cross sits on a concrete base shaped like the Pentagon at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Co., just a few miles from where the plane crashed into a field. The cross made a 311-mile journey from Brooklyn on Saturday, accompanied by hundreds of motorcyclists, many of them current or retired New York firefighters.

The Terror Dream offers a lively analysis of the mythmaking that substituted for the work of reflection that 9/11 required.  read more »

Shortly after 9/11, two American flags were placed in the iconic main hall of Grand Central Terminal. The first, a flagpole standard, was soon joined by an enormous 40-foot-by-20-foot banner, vertically suspended over the center of the room. Although smaller flags have been hung at Grand Central before, according to MTA Metro-North spokeswoman Margie Anders, a flag of this size—nearly four stories tall—is “basically unprecedented.”  read more »

When Rudy Giuliani went to speak to Manhattan Republicans at Cipriani at 42nd Street last night, he snuck through the back door. By the main door was a bag pipe player greeting guests for the $1,000-a-plate dinner. And also, more than fifty protesters.

"People say, 'Oh my god, there's Rudy,’” said Rosaleen Tallon, who was holding a picture of her late brother, Sean, a fire fighter who died on Sept. 11. “He was great for New York on 9-11.”

Tallon, needless to say, does not think Giuliani has been particularly great the rest of the time.

She was joined outside Cipriani by John McNamara, a former firefighter who developed cancer after working on Ground Zero, Peter Gorman, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and family members of other sick rescue workers and fallen firefighters. They were there to contend, as they have before, that the former mayor didn’t do enough to prepare for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, that he gave fire fighters inadequate radios and that he didn't adequately alert rescue workers to the health risks associated with working at Ground Zero.

"It all comes into this one story,” Tallon said, referring to Giuliani’s presidential candidacy. “I don't want that to be the reason people go into the booth thinking he was so great."  read more »