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more on the memorial

I get mail. I respond, in one lump sum.

No, it is not my job to determine whether or not the WTC Memorial is appropriate. But it is within my right to determine whether or not I like it and that's just what I did last night.

So, I was a little grumpy, a lot pissy and maybe overwrought and a bit high strung about it. Guess what? I still am. Basically, it's because I'm still grumpy, pissy, overwrought and high strung about the whole damn event that led up to this memorial.

One of you asks if I could go back in time, would I change that day and make the hijackings and crashes never happen? Surprisingly, I say no. I would not change it. What if I could, and I did, and then September 12th came around and not three, but five or six planes were hijacked and 5,000 people died instead of 3,000? You can't change what's already happened. That's for science fiction novels and far-fetched movies. Even fantasizing that you can is dangerous. It leaves you feeling more impotent than before.

I agree with Faith that the towers should have been rebuilt as they were, and maybe that's the only way we could turn back time, or give the illusion that we can. For me, nothing else can come close to what is appropriate to place at that site. It was, and should always be, where the twin towers stand. Not stood. Stand. Present tense. I should be able to look out of my office window and see the towers rising in the west. New bricks, new people, new offices, new day.

I hate the memorial that was chosen because it is not so much a memorial as it is a piece of concept art. It looks so corporate, so business like that I expect a comapny logo to spring up on the side of it.The whole process of choosing what will be in that place was tainted from the start. It is rushed. It is too soon. And it is only being hurried into place for political reasons. That sucks, plain and simple. People are putting their egos and their selfish motivations ahead of every idea this memorial was supposed to encompass.

It's just business. The emotion has been stripped from the concept and it's just business now.

So yea, I'm grumpy. I'm pissy. And this mood will never go away. It will always be there, scratching the surface, waiting for something to call it out. I do nothing to silence it, nothing to confine this mood. Why would I?

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» Where's the Beef? from VodkaPundit
Here you go -- the finalist for the 9/11 memorial on the site of the former Twin Towers: Created by... [Read More]

» http://www.allahpundit.com/archives/000190.html from Allah Is In The House
The creator of worlds is spent after yesterday's climactic Dean-o Photoshop and shall require a little "recovery time" before he feels in the mood again. Allah's male readers know where he is coming from. In the meantime, go forth, Satans,... [Read More]

» http://www.allahpundit.com/archives/000190.html from Allah Is In The House
The creator of worlds is spent after yesterday's climactic Dean-o Photoshop and shall require a little "recovery time" before he feels in the mood again. Allah's male readers know where he is coming from. In the meantime, go forth, Satans,... [Read More]

» WAR: The Memorial from Baseball Crank
Zev Chafets argues that the WTC memorial proposal is distinctively Israeli in style, and attributes this to the fact that its designer is Israeli. Key quote: "Israelis understand how to commemorate mass murder the way Eskimos know how to deal... [Read More]

Comments

Michele,

Agreed - I think it looks like a parking lot that they put reflecting pools on. If anything, the "cold" nature of it reflects something, but that's about it. I think you're never going to please everyone and probably would have heard complaints about every design, but I think this one wasn't exactly what a lot of people thought were going to happen there. It does no justice to what happened.

Don Imus this morning was saying "what, do they want to rebuild the buildings with two planes sticking out of them???" when hearing about complaints about the design - he was partially tongue in cheek about it - but he did agree that there's no real feeling to this.

I had been contacted a while back from one of the designers of the infinite spire design and I have some affinity for it, mainly because it has some greenery, and the "strewn about" stone markers absolutely reflect what happen that day.

I, for one, like the preservation of the Huge Gaping Holes in the ground. For me it will be a constant reminder of what we lost that day, and what we gained because of that day. In fact, I think we should permanently rename 9/12 "Restoration of the National Testicles Day."

I think it could be big.

There has been a combination of factors that have forced me to write off the whole thing to prevent my getting perpetually ornery:

1. Sentimentality. We honor the dead through the courage of our subsequent actions, not through fancy special effects, or huge memorials, or by permanently marking the scars in our landscape wrought by terrorists. A simple plaque -- I mean 5-foot on a car-sized stone -- in the midst of a garden, would be sufficient. The message to terrorists: We get on with our lives, we get on with our business, but for the sake of the dead, and for the sake of the historic buildings, we will place a small remembrance.

2. Dishonesty. Putting a crane of cables and windmills (WTF?!) on top of a 60-story building and pretending we've built higher than the WTC is spin, and a sign of a cowardly people unwilling to reach the heights of previous generations. But even worse, it's the sign of people unwilling to admit they lack the courage of their parents and grandparents, and try to hide that fact.

3. Tastelessness. None of the designs showed real respect for the true beauty of Manhattan -- which is the Art Deco skyscraper. Granted, we don't need to go entirely retro, but there were designs that built on the skyline of the Chrysler building and the Empire State Building. (None of the finalists were anything but horrible.) There are were many beautiful options -- but the architects, for the most part, want to build monuments to themselves, still on that shock the middle class thing, and want to build in the service of idiotic political theories. Anyone remember shithead Richard Serra's abomination, Tilted Arc?

The current design is about as good as we're going to get from this generation of politicians and architects. At least it's not hideous. But I'd just write the whole thing off ... there's more to NY than the WTC site, and more to America than NY.

You're absolutely right about the memorial looking like a piece of corporate-sponsored concept art. I first saw the winner on the front of the local Jersey paper this morning, and two things came to mind:

1) It looks kinda futuristic, kinda cool...
2) It sucks ass as a World Trade Center memorial.

It's like they took the big gaping holes in the ground, filled 'em up with water, and put some nice plants around it all. Tie as many ribbons around as many turds as you like, and you're still left with turds.

I am one who supports rebuilding. I think I've made that plain. But I've never asked if, in the rush to make some kind of weepy theraputic memorial, the rebuild notion was one of the designs on the table? allowed on the table?

Many people I've spoken to express some affinity for one or another memorial ideas...and then say that building them back would be the best idea...taller.

Has there been any kind of movement to make this opinion widely known? Is there a rebuild petition?

Would anyone pay attention? Would the idiot who sits in Gracie Mansion shoot it down?

I agree with Faith that the towers should have been rebuilt as they were, and maybe that's the only way we could turn back time, or give the illusion that we can. For me, nothing else can come close to what is appropriate to place at that site.

Amen.

I didn't really look at the alternatives, but as somebody who worked in Tower One, I like the idea of being able to go back and stand where the plaza was and reorient myself to the holes where the towers stood; one thing that's unsettling about downtown now is the sense of having lost exactly where the towers were.

Rebuild the towers? Emotionally, I love it. Practically, who the hell wants to go back and work there? Not my firm, I'll tell you that. Rebuilding two 110-story towers and getting stuck with empty floors because few companies can get their employees to go back or can afford the insurance. . . that would be more depressing than anything.

For me, nothing else can come close to what is appropriate to place at that site. It was, and should always be, where the twin towers stand.

I didn't know you felt that way. I share that view, but then I feel guilty thinking of the survivors and the relatives and friends of the dead. I don't live there, but they do, and I wonder if seeing those towers again wouldn't be like a knife in the heart.

I also wonder what would happen were a member of the NYFD or NYPD to have to visit the new towers, someone who perhaps had been there that day--would they stand outside the elevators thinking, "This was where I was when I saw [x] for the last time," etc.? You actually know some people in the fire department, though . . . do you think it would upset them to see the towers put back as though nothing had happened?

It wouldn't upset me (and I don't like the new plans either). But then, I wasn't there.

I agree with Faith that the towers should have been rebuilt as they were, and maybe that's the only way we could turn back time, or give the illusion that we can. For me, nothing else can come close to what is appropriate to place at that site.

Amen.

Inshalla

"I hate the memorial that was chosen because it is not so much a memorial as it is a piece of concept art. It looks so corporate, so business like that I expect a comapny logo to spring up on the side of it.
...
It's just business. The emotion has been stripped from the concept and it's just business now."

Dammit, "just business" was what was going on when the bastards knocked the originals down. "just business" is one of our greatest strengths, the source of our wealth and power, and we do it better than anyone else on Earth. "just business" is the way we organize the most successful collective efforts, harnessing the voluntary cooperation of everyone involved to maximum effect and enriching all of them beyond the wildest dreams of those barbarians who thought that Allah would provide the things we make for ourselves if they gave him a human sacrifice.

A symbol that embodies "just business" is entirely appropriate here.

Ken has made a good and interesting point, my own comments notwithstanding.

"A symbol that embodies "just business" is entirely appropriate here."
Yeah, but "corporate logos" and "corporate art" are not what business is really about. Instead they fit right in with "mission statements" and "human resources" as fodder for Dilbert. (How many millions did AT&T spend to come up with something that looked like the death star. And remember when NBC hired some fancy consultants to revise its logo? The result exactly matched the one that some guy at Nebraska Public Television had designed on his lunch hour?)
Business is about making things, buying things, and selling things. I don't see any of that here.

There is a petition. It's at petitionsonline--I googled 'Rebuild the Towers' and found it.

Don't let them foist that thing upon us.