Recently, my company moved to new offices. While packing my desk, I came across a note jotted to myself sometime last fall. As we approach Sept. 11, I thought I would share it with the world. As best I can recall, the impetus for this note was that the families of victims of Sept. 11 were agitating for the entire World Trade Center site to be given over to a memorial.

Of Monuments and Mourning

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is no less moving for being in Washington instead of Vietnam. Lincoln wasn't shot where he is now memorialized.

The World Trade Center site is more than a place where 3,000 people died. It was a place where 50,000 people lived every day -- lived and conducted business and ate and shopped, and where thousands more passed through each day seeking inspiration in the 100 mile views. No one is suggesting we refrain from rebuilding the Pentagon, where the tragedy of the victims and the heroism on the ground were equally as great. So why is it that Ground Zero (a term I hate, by the way) should become a dead place. With all the talk of not "letting the terrorists win", shouldn't we be rebuilding bigger and more grandly, with more bravado and boldness? Where is the memorial to the living? We live in a city that is the most diverse in the world, in one of the richest nations in the world. September 11 was an awful awful day (trust me, I was there), but in the end, what better thumb in the eye of America-haters than to rebuild it better than it was before? Isn't that the ultimate revenge -- you can bend us, but we don't break? Seems to me it is.