9/11 Museum: Stories told at bedrock powerful as a punch to the gut

The National September 11 Memorial Museum opened ceremonially this week, and according to a New York Times review, it delivers a gut-punch experience.

The writer sums it up: “The first thing to say about it, and maybe the last, is that it’s emotionally overwhelming, particularly, I expect, for New Yorkers who were in the city on that apocalyptic September day and the paranoia-fraught weeks that followed, but almost as certainly for the estimated 2 billion people around the globe who followed the horror unfolding on television, radio and the Internet.”

The museum is almost entirely subterranean, and the writer suggests the descent adds to the darkness of memorializing such events marked by grief, partisan rancor, drama, war and debate.

President Barack Obama dedicated the museum yesterday, and it opens to the public Wednesday.
 
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