What Ground Zero Will Say About Us

It’s absolutely amazing that the designs for ground zero in New York City continually focus on high-rise buildings (“Grand Visions Rise From Rubble,” Dec. 19). It is almost as if nearly 3,000 people were never killed on the site. Imagine building office space at Gettysburg or the Normandy beachhead, or building a resort over the battleship Arizona.

I guess the only answer is that New York City and its business and political leaders really are greedy and shallow and care about business and money over lives and history.

Perhaps it’s this generation of leaders -- a generation that seems to believe that the only purpose of life is to acquire money, and lots of it, without reflection. Future generations will judge them harshly for their lack of insight into humanity.

Martin Ostrye

South Pasadena

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New York City should be careful in selecting a design for what will replace the destroyed World Trade Center’s twin towers. While there should be a place for a quiet memorial in the new complex to remember those slain, the entire New York skyline should not be a monument to the success of terrorism. We have a culture that focuses on the future, not the past. No one minds a small scar, but it should not dominate the whole organism.

Winsor Crosby

Long Beach