Battery Park Pt. 2

Here's my Urban Journalism piece for my visit to Battery Park, rough draft:

I was careful to stand about 15 feet from the Hudson River and still felt darts of water travel with the wind and latch onto my lenses. After having to take off my glasses a few times to wipe them, I wound up shoving them into my pocket instead. Of all days, I chose what seemed to be the windiest of the year to come out and peer at the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park. Fifteen minutes earlier, as I squeezed past people while trying to exit the train station at Bowling Green, I realized that I wasn’t the only one braving the gloomy sky and rough currents for a piece of what once was.
As an uptown New Yorker, it is easy to associate international tourists with Central Park, Times Square, and Ground Zero, while completely forgetting about the rich and abundant history found at the tip of Manhattan. However, walking through Battery Park was like stepping back into time and I was forced to immediately appreciate all that surrounded me.
The large sphere created by Fritz Koenig was the monument I related to the most, for it once stood in the plaza of the World Trade Center and was almost destroyed on September 11, 2001. Out of respect, I paused to study its disfigured pieces and awkward shape. Right before my mind was consumed with sadness, the way the structure still held its robustness filled me with hope and satisfaction.
Drawn to the water, I found myself near the edge of the harbor once more and felt solitude reminiscent to that of Pete Hamill’s visits. My heart skipped a beat when my eyes registered the American Merchant Mariners Memorial, he so compellingly described, a couple of feet away. An overwhelming mixture of fear and astonishment filled me as I took in the three seamen trying to rescue a fourth from the water as the waves tragically engulfed his face with every current.
While Pete Hamill and I come from two dissimilar walks of life, I wandered through Battery Park with a deeper understanding for his fascination than I thought I would. Not one usually interested in patriotism for this country, I couldn’t help but feel something very heavy and foreign building inside of me. I had the misconception that since I was younger than him, the war monuments from before my time, such as those of World War II, wouldn’t affect me much. Maybe I’ve been patriotic all along.

True, true.
Looks like a B plus to me!

=)

-franso