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November 20, 2003

The memorials
: I went to see the models and presentations of the eight finalists for the World Trade Center memorial today.
There are two I could like. There are others I could hate.
They are all complex -- too complex. As I said yesterday, a memorial should have one clear idea eloquently expressed: the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial all meet that test. None of these proposals does.
You can see my own proposal here. Let me make clear that I never thought for a second that mine would progress; that's not why I made it. I made it because I had to; it was a proper tribute, a necessary step in healing. So my reaction to these finalists is not as a participant but as a witness, a mourner, a pilgrim, a survivor, a New Yorker.
Here is my reaction to each:xsi 64 crack

: Votives in Suspension is the one I like best. And that surprises me. In photos, it looks cluttered. In the model, it looks elegant. It provides a space for contemplation -- sanctuaries, they're called -- that are beautiful and quiet. The open space with the hanging lights, the votives, is a canvas on which to place your own memories and thoughts. It is dramatic ... inventive ... unique ... appropriate. The top-level view of the site is clean and, in fact, uncluttered and does an excellent job of marking the edges of both the site and the footprints of the towers. Except for John F. Kennedy's eternal flame, I cannot think of prominent memorials that will depend on ongoing fuel and that is new; here is a memorial that must be kept up; it cannot just sit in the weather like a slab of granite. And that is good; this memory must be tended. Among these finalists, this is my choice.xsi 64 crack

: Dual Memory has one element I like: Large photos of some of the heroes and innocents who died there. That is what I so wanted to see in this memorial: Memory of the people who lost their lives as more than names in stone; I want to see the people just as we saw them on the streetcorners of New York and then in the pages of The Times. I want a human memorial. Other than that, this proposal is confused, trying to create many elements, each with symbolism that will be clearer to its creators than to its visitors. The inside space is warm and of the right scale; the outside space is a bit of a mess, trying to do too much. It need not give us dual memory. A single vision of memory would be sufficient and appropriate.xsi 64 crack

: Suspending Memory shocked and almost offended me. The small columns that rise up look too much like tombstones to me: a cemetery is the last thing we need here. But it is worse: Each of them is of the shape of a World Trade Center tower. So the tombstones mimic the tombs in which these people died. Yet worse, as I examined one of the columns, I saw lines that are meant to give us the name and age of the victim but these lines looked like too many of the newspaper graphics that marked the floors of the dead. All this imagery of the towers themselves seems -- quite unintentionally -- disturbing, cold, almost tasteless. xsi 64 crack

: Lower Waters looks like nothing so much as a Frank Lloyd Wright outtake. Its spaces are terribly chilling and inhuman. It is confusing, lacking any coherent vision and message that I can see. xsi 64 crack

: Passages of Light is, at first, a dramatic concept: light above and below, coming through thousands of white tubes. In two dimensions, it looks appealing. In three dimensions, it looks like a 1962 bank headquarters gone mad -- or the perhaps instead the set of the next Star Wars movie. It shows off. It is a case of the designer trying to outshine the memorial and the message and those memorialized. xsi 64 crack

: Garden of Lights is gimicky and, like most of the others, tries to throw together too many ideas: more tubes of light, more columns sticking up, cold spaces, a walk with names and roses almost as an afterthought. It appears to have been conceived by committee.xsi 64 crack

: Reflecting Absence is built around water and I'm sorry to say this, but it reminds me of an aquarium. And the ground-level view of tile looks like a bathtub in the bathtub. The water in constant motion seems unsettling, as if there is never a moment of peace here. xsi 64 crack

: Inversion of Light is sleek but in a bad way -- sleek like a modernistic airport. It, too, is busy. It, too, uses water, rushing by a wall of names. It, too, has cold and inhuman spaces.xsi 64 crack

They have the original boards from each entry hanging near the models and images. I can't imagine how the judges saw what they saw in those posters. They are so very abstract and necessarily brief; they give snippets of a view rather than a vision. But these boards from the professionals did make me feel a bit better about my own clumsy and amateurish board; I probably expressed my idea as well as I could.xsi 64 crack

I was also struck by how architectural all these are. As I said yesterday, all the finalists are architects or designers who might as well be architects and that shows clearly in these boards: Architects selected architects, for they all speak a language they understand best. I'm not sure that language will speak to the hearts of the millions who will come to this space to find memory and comfort and pain and healing. They will find architecture.xsi 64 crack

Even the Votives of Light, as imaginative and beautiful as they are, may not be as sweeping and simple and clear -- and eternal -- as they should be.xsi 64 crack

I wonder whether we are rushing this project. As much as I want to see the space rebuilt -- as happy as I am to see the PATH and its life and utility returning to the site -- I do not want to see us hurry to lay down a vision from today that will not live into tomorrow. For our first duty is to remember. We must remember well.xsi 64 crack

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Rebuilding
: I can't tell you how relieved and proud I felt today as I came up the Cortlandt Street subway stop and saw the walkway being completed to the PATH train. Up on the street, the new PATH station is ready to open on Sunday (having taken the last train to the World Trade Center, I was hoping very much to take the first train now but on Sunday, I can't). Here is the first breath of life coming back to this place of death. We got hit, but we didn't stay down for long. We rebuilt. We're rebuilding. It felt good. xsi 64 crack

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Short and to the point
: Clay Shirky says: "F*** ontology."xsi 64 crack

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Money makes ze voerld go around
: David Weinberger points us to some fascinating maps and charts analyzing the candidates' fundraising. With three of them facing no limits, this is going to be a big game.
Go to the map and look at Dean, Bush, and others and then look at Clark and you see just how much he has to catch up. Click on all the links and figure out what it all means... It's the biggest betting game in town. It's the ultimate reality show.xsi 64 crack

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Michael Moore defects; likes wursts better than burgers
: Medienkritik translates some reports on Michael Moore's German tour. From taz (under the very strange subhead, "The profit Michael Moore on his German tour: He's no Jesus."):

He made a damn lot of jokes, all afternoon. One could have died of laughter. The Americans are so stupid. Completely idiotic. Ignorant. 85% of 18 to 25 year olds can't even find Iraq on the map! Wouldn't that be a good UN resolution? Before George Bush can bomb a country, his countrymen need to first take a test. And if they don't know where the country is, they have to bomb themselves. Wouldn't that be something?
Michael Moore is now speaking in a low position, convinced and stupid, he parodies the average American, its funny, and he is really good at it.

From Der Spiegel:

It's our national policy to keep people stupid.

From another paper:

Nine eleven was not a terrorist attack, it was a military attack.

Which, I think, makes all the thousands of dead soldiers and is Moore's particularly sick way of justifying -- or at least elevating -- the attack. xsi 64 crack

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Bastards
: The news from Turkey keeps getting worse (according to FoxNews this morning): 25 dead, almost 400 missing, British consul-general missing.
And why are they demonstrating against Bush and Blair?
xsi 64 crack

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When pull comes to shove
: A prof speaking in Britain backs up what Fred Wilson said at the AlwaysOn thing: Push advertising is over. Pull is the future of commerce. [via IWantMedia]xsi 64 crack

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Jackson's prosecutors
: Well, I was certainly not alone being disgusted at the yuck-yuck tone of yesterday's Michael Jackson police press conference. Says a St. Pete columnist:

I was incensed at the tone of Wednesday's nationally televised press conference announcing a warrant for Michael Jackson's arrest on charges of child molestation. It proved again that when it comes to Michael Jackson, everything - even the sexual abuse of a child - is a laughing matter. I watched the press conference with a St. Petersburg Times colleague and we both were shocked over the jokes and guffaws bandied about by Santa Barbara District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., Sheriff Jim Anderson and the media.

: The alleged victim is said to be a 12-year-old cancer survivor whom Jackson reportedly plied with wine and sleeping pills.
xsi 64 crack

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