What new monuments do we need?

From the New York Times:

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States, has pledged to spend $250 million over five years to help reimagine the country’s approach to monuments and memorials, in an effort to better reflect the nation’s diversity and highlight buried or marginalized stories.

The first major grant under the new $250 million initiative will be a $4 million, three-year gift to Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based public art and research studio that works with artists and community groups across the country to “reimagine public spaces through stories of social justice and equity,” according to its website.

The cover photo of the story:

Readers: What new monuments do you propose?

My first idea is a monument on the Hudson River to the French software engineers who kept the Airbus A320 from stalling despite Captain Sully’s heroic stick-full-back-the-whole-time landing (some details). Computer programmers are a group whose stories are marginalized, as required by the foundation. How often does anyone want to hear a tale of cisgender white male nerds writing code?

9 thoughts on “What new monuments do we need?

  1. I have a couple of ideas. How about a monument to the BLM people looting the Apple, Coach and Channel stores in downtown NYC this past May? Or why not a monument to the police sergeant in NYC on his knees to his new overlords, you know, the guy who notwithstanding the deference he showed had his brains beaten out on the Brooklyn Bridge a few weeks later. I think it is about time that these peaceful protesters were given proper recognition.

  2. In a globalized world, why does it make sense to have monuments to Americans? We’re a small percentage of the world’s population. Why not have statues to remind us of the human greatness that exists all around Planet Earth?

    • Google already does this with their Daily Doodle. In any given year, I can’t recognize the names of at least three quarters of the people it celebrates. They also have permanently removed genders of both parents and children on Father’s Day.

      I think, to go along with the Holy Clinton Hot Sauce, we should make monuments in the shape of Heinz Ketchup bottles, in honor of Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose philanthropy with the Heinz fortune has been legendary, including to the Tides Foundation and Tides Center, none of which, of course has gone to BLM.

      From 2004:

      “She’s not going to send out signals as if she’s going to try to take over the government,” Wirth said.

      Whew! That was good news.

      The Tides Center has historically been a great way to send taxpayer-funded grants to liberal and leftist organizations. It helps avoid the messy problems of having someone vote on sending millions of taxpayer dollars to groups directly opposed to the government of the United States.

      https://freebeacon.com/democrats/tides-center-funnels-170-million-in-taxpayer-money-to-left-wing-groups/

    • Today’s Doodle is dedicated to Mary Ann Shadd, who was (according to Wikipedia) the first Black woman publisher in North America and the first Woman publisher in Canada. Oddly enough, I actually remember her name and her occupation because I learned about her in grade school in the 1970s, back when nobody knew anything and the world was even more overrun with racists than it is today;

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Shadd

      “In 2018 the New York Times published a belated obituary for her.[8]

      Shadd’s 197th birthday was observed with a Google doodle on October 9, 2020, appearing across Canada, the United States, Latvia, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.[34]”

      Why Latvia? If you’re going to publish the Doodle in Northern Europe, just south of Finland and Estonia, why not the rest of Europe? Was Mary Ann Shadd ever in Latvia?

      “62.3% Latvians
      24.9% Russians
      3.2% Belarusians
      2.2% Ukrainians
      2.0% Poles
      1.2% Lithuanians
      0.3% Roma
      0.2% Jews
      3.6% Others /
      Unspecified
      Religion
      80.0% Christianity
      —34.3% Lutheranism
      —25.1% Catholicism
      —20.6% Other Christian
      18.3% No religion
      1.7% Others[2]”

      And what’s up with Ghana?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana

      “Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, as he became known, played an instrumental part in the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement, and in establishing the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to teach his ideologies of communism and socialism.[51] His life achievements were recognised by Ghanaians during his centenary birthday celebration, and the day was instituted as a public holiday in Ghana (Founder’s Day).[52]”

    • @Philg: I’m sure it’s accidental, but the Doodle makes her look like she worked at the 19th-century version of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (established in 1861 to print paper currency “Demand Notes” in lieu of coinage to fund the Civil War).

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Engraving_and_Printing

      With a little creative historicism, Mary Ann Shadd could be celebrated for inspiring the government to print the money to fund the Civil War.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Engraving_and_Printing

      “At this time the government had no facility for the production of paper money so a private firm produced the Demand Notes in sheets of four. These sheets were then sent to the Treasury Department where dozens of clerks signed the notes and scores of workers cut the sheets and trimmed the notes by hand.”

    • @Philg: Aaah, the Dreyfus affair. Lesson number one: come up with the evidence fingering the actual traitor and you get banished to the deserts of Tunisia!

      “Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was the Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the southern desert of Tunisia in November 1896.”

      There’s even something obliquely in that story for sci-fi fans:

      “Jews were not desired” on the staff, and gave Dreyfus poor marks for cote d’amour (French slang: attraction; translatable as likability). Bonnefond’s assessment lowered Dreyfus’s overall grade; he did the same to another Jewish candidate, Lieutenant Picard.” Where was Guinan when Picard needed her then?

      Deserts of Tunisia and Star Wars:

      https://www.tripsavvy.com/star-wars-tours-in-tunisia-4136255

  3. I have a solution which should make everyone happy.

    We should convert to Islam and follow the teaching of the Holy Quran. The Quran forbids drawing of images and erecting statues [1], [2]. Than, it will be easy to remove all statues and no one will question why.

    What’s more. Thanks to COVID-19, we already have laws forcing us to wear a mask to which we have happily gave in to. So requiring Burqa [3] will be easy to enforce and thus prevent the spread of COVID-19.

    There, 2 hot issues are solved in one stone. What’s next?

    [1] https://www.islamicity.org/20587/islams-prohibition-of-drawing-images-and-erecting-statues/
    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam
    [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa

  4. I think we should build monuments to short attention spans and illiteracy, with Twitter graphics all over them. I’ve spent the past two hours talking to someone in a government office via email. I’ve written the exact same, clear information three times, in three short sentences. Each time, this person has responded to my email without reading the third sentence. It’s not a long email – less than 100 words.

    First sentence, no problem.
    Second sentence, no problem.
    Third sentence? It’s not even there. Doesn’t register at all.

    She has to have this information today because she’s going on vacation next week.

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