James Maroon is the pool cleaner for the 9/11 Memorial. I only know this because documentary filmmaker Josh Charow’s chose to make a film about him. Charow’s beautiful portrait made me think of all the millions of night workers paving roads, mopping floors, wiping turnstiles, baking bread that we don’t know about. All the quiet, unsung heroes of the night, the ones we never see and rarely think about, the ones who take care of schools and museums and airports while the city sleeps. Sometimes, in the depths of Winter I wake up and listen to the scraping of snow in the laneway behind our house and I know that tomorrow the path will be clear. “It gets dark in there sometimes, and you can lose yourself in there,” says Maroon of the reflecting pools. “But it’s pretty beautiful to see the sun come over the wall. It’s something that most people don’t get a chance to see.”
