Look, the first thing is not to trust the word of the LMDC regarding the memorial. I have been working on this since Jan. '03. They set up a series of "Listening to the City" forums to "gather public input" then promptly ignored it and did as they pleased. In May of '03 there was a forum attended by dozens of FDNY families and firefighters. We all asked that the firefighters who gave their lives 9/11 be remembered at the memorial by dept., company and rank. That was ignored. They will receive nothing more than an "insignia" beside their randomly placed name. No company (i.e. Eng. 21)and no rank. In March of '03 the LMDC passed a resolution that said the permanant memorial could contain none of the characteristics that made the "flyers of the missing" such powerful and memorable memorials. In Nov of '03 in a three day conference attended by over 2,000 people and gathered over 15,000 comments, "Reflecting Absence" was rejected by a 2-1 margin. It was criticsized for having no reference to the attacks, to sterile, could be about anything. Most comments recommended the firefighters be grouped by dept. company and rank.
None of this was accepted.
The "Memorial Mission Statment" specifically ruled out the words, "sacrifice" and "heroism."
Michael Arad, the desinger, refuses to list coworkers, siblings and spouses and entire familes that died together, together. Instead they will be cast about the memorial randomly, without reference to the events of the day. He does not he said, "want to put an order upon the haphazard brutality of the day." There was an order to the brutality; if there wasn't we would not need a memorial. He wants to express the truth through his concept, by ignoring and changing the truth.
The design, one critic praised, "Neither confronts nor even acknowledges the terrorist attcks" (Nancy Princenthal, Art in America, '04/04). This is why it was chosen. As Arad has said, "he did not want to be too literal," he did want to "interfere with someone's interpretation of the memorial."
Forget the facade and the Sphere; there's little chance they will be back at the site and they cannot be returned to their place; the entire "9/11 memorial center" will be underground, virtually beneath the IFC, in it's basement, accesable only by two ramps (if you walk down them you have to walk up them). That was something the LMDC failed to mention discussing the sq footage. The IFC gets a big bldng in the middle of the site, prominently featured, in fact the visitors center to the memorial center will be in it - with a set up like that, what difference does sq footage make? By the way, Bernstein was talking to the LMDC in 12/02, long before there was any "public input" in to what should be built at ground zero.
Vartan Gregorian, the chairman of the jury for the memorial, in picking Reflecting Absence, directed that any artifacts of the WTC should go underground "to protect the integrity of the memorial." Princenthal reported that the jury referred to the facade as the "potato chip." There might be ten people in America who upon gazing upon the ruins of the WTC would think of junk food - they were all on the memorial jury.
Gregorian, born in Iran and raised and educated in the Middle East, wrote, in response to attacks, a long piece called, "Islam, A Mosaic, Not a Monolith." In it he chided the attitude of several prominant Americans toward Islam: Ann Coulter he quoated as, "We should invade thier countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." He said, "Americans believe history is irrelevant, unfortunetly it's not" and "it seems self evident that knowledge leads to understanding, not the garden path of indoctrination." None of this he applied to the memorial or 9/11: the remnants and artifacts were rejected because they told us what to think; the WTC was attacked because they were iconic of America; the ruins of it were rejected because they were iconic of the attacks.
Reflecting Absence renders no judgment, promises no deliverance, recognizes neither the evil that struck nor the sacrifice in response.
The IFC contains no effort to examine the nature of evil; it would place the attacks in an entirely political context; it would allow for "debate" as to whether it was America's own policies that led to the attacks.
Dick Tofel, the IFC president told me in an email that the meaning of 9/11 depends upon your "experience" of it; truth and morality is relative.
The fact is, as I told you in an email to your contact address, Sept. 11 can and must be allowed to stand on it's own. It should not be turned into a boiler plate of political controversy. It does not need the benefit of the illumination of Tofel, Bernstein, Arad or Gregorian. They would replace the courage and inspiration of the FDNY of 9/11 with the "courage and inspiration" of Tibeten monks. This is what Pataki said. Nobody is visiting the site to learn about Ukraine democracy. They are there for Sept. 11; forget that and everything you build there will fail.
Also, I asked Tofel why his building doesn't go underground and let the memorial center go at street level, where peolple might actually know it's there. He skipped that one.

Michael Burke

P.S. Please check out my email of last night. It contains more pertenant info.

Neither of your links to the Burlingame article really work right now, but the article is currently available without a subscription at:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006791