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FEATURES

19 The Architecture of MemoryPost-September 11, memorials at theWorld Trade Center and Pentagonrespectively symbolize the gaping pitwhere international commerce formerly

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towered, and the charred base of the militaryestablishment. But Shanksville, where Flight 93crash-landed, has only a naked field. Howwill that field look to future generations?BY JESSE HICKS

Slouching Toward UtopiaMarketing, enterprise, faith and folly inthe United States'most (in)famousplanned communitiesBY GREG PRESTO

Art Collection, lnc.For more than a century, steel moldedPittsburgh's cultural framework. But therecent past has seen the city fending offbankruptcy, blight and brain drain. The NextAmerican Cltydiscusses the history that oncedefined Pittsburgh, and the questionsnearly every rust belt city facesBY MATTHEW NEWTON

AREHITEETURE

SIX.PLUS YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER II, 2OOI, THE MEMORIALS IN NEW YORK

ANO WASHINGTON ARE FINALLY TAKING SHAPE. BUT SHANKSVILLE, I{HERE FLIGHT93 CRASH-LANDED IN RURAL PENNSYLVANIA, IS ONLY A NAKEO FIELO.

HOT{ T{ILL THAT FIELO LOOK TO FUTURE GENERATIONS?

0N THE S0UTI{ERN TIP 0F MANHATTAN, L6 acres remain gaping, six years after September 1,1,.

Construction cranes rise out of the hole, diligently assembling a new skyline. Developerssay that by 2012, at a cost of $3 billion, a complex of office buildings will again scrape thesky. Its centerpiece, the would-be-iconic Freedom Tower, will rise tJ76 feet, making it theworld's tallest office building. From its apex will rise an illuminated spire, echoing the Statueof Libert¡ the intense beam of light reaching over a thousand feet into the heavens. Below,at street level, the names of the dead will be inscribed. lN WASHINGT0I{, 8.C., freshly pouredconcrete awaits a collection of l-84 memorial benches, each overhanging a lit reflecting pooland inscribed to a victim of the attack. By Sept. 2008, according to plan, the benches will bearrayed in order of the victims' ages, from 3 to71,, beneath a protective canopy of maple tress.lN RURAL SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, the wind comes in low and constant over the ñeld ofa reclaimed strip mine. Above the site loom two dragline excavators. Enormous crane-likemachines, this terrain belongs to them: A place of digging, stripping bare,only now recoveringits barest protections. They stand several stories high, weigh 2,000 tons; their scale dwarfsanything in the human landscape. But they have done their excavating, unearthed enough. Nowthey stand unmoving, rusting skeletons reaching into the sky. From an outstretched boom some200 feet in the air blows an American flag. Here at Shanksville lies a blank field and a story. >)

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lÃllnter 200?, No. 11

BY JESSE HICKS

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AUGUST 4, 2OO2t A youngster looks at angel f¡gures placed

at the edge of the field near Shanksvillle. Pennsylvan¡a.

where United Flight 93 crashed on Sept. il.2001.

A SCARLESS FIELÍISix years ago, passengers on United Flight 93 realized theil role in a suicide

plot and decided to rush the cockpit. A struggle for control ensued; the

plane came low over tlìe ridge now behind us, its wings rocking. It passed so

lorv - on its side - that one witness clai¡ned, "You could probably count

the rivets." It struck the glound at 563 miles an hour: snroke rose high into

the heave¡rs, a black exhalation from the earth. Nearby photogl'¿¡pher Val

McClatchey captured the cloud's rise over an archetypal red barn, seconds

aftel irnpact, and later titled it, "The End of Serenity." The Boeing 757 left

a crater 115 feet rvide and 10 to 12 feet deep. No one survived.

These facts, this story, bring thousands to Shanksville every year. Many

expect to see something bigger, somethinggreater. Sornething nronumental.

Insteacl, the community volunteers - the Flight 93 Ambassadors - point

to an American flag mounted on a fence about 500 yards au'ay, just inside

the tlee line:T-hat's n,here it happer¡¿rl. That's where the plane came dowtr'

Sacred ground. See how the hemlocks ale burned?

But nature has reclaimed her dominion; beyond the scorched tlees

there is no cratel', no obvious, comforting scar in the land. Crime scene

investigators replaced the contarninated topsoil, and time has done the

rest. Nature heals. Nature folgets. Nature is inclifferent.

Human beings. howevel'. are not - or at least so we tell ourselves. We

like to believe that we recognize and accouttt all suffering, that we lìonor

heloism. We like to believe that hur¡an nlemory does trot yield so easily

to the wearing force of tinre. We like to believe we can stare long enough

at those faras,a1, trees and, yes, see u'here the burning jet fuel left its r¡at'k

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- that we can lead the ash and knorv its rneaning.

Here lies the problenr: Absent the obvious symbolism of the World

Trade Center or the Pentagon sites - the gaping pit where international

cornmerce forrÌ1erly torvered;the charrecl base of the military establishment

- Shanksville has only a nake clñeld,tabula tasa. "A comnron ñeld one day.

A fielcl of honor forever," says the Flight 93 National Memorial Mission

Statement. But how will that field look to the future?

Remembrance takes many forms; melnory is a process of constant

renerval, not an end product. Shanksville - like the World Trade Center

and the Pentagon - stands at the vanguard of that process' Here, private

grief becomes public, shared. History takes shape as we, together, decide

horv rve will l'emember; what we rvill emphasize, rvhat rve rvill discard -horv we will see ourselves through the lens of mernory. This is tlle questiorl

of all cornmemoration, public or plivate, personal ol nalional: What willwe choose to salvage from the wreck of time, a¡rd what rvill rve let go?

MEMORY IIR MEMORAB¡LIA?The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, its name admitting the impossibility of

etel'nal remembrance. does not aint for the monumental. Its tributes have

a more human scale: A 4O-foot (in recognition of the 40 passengers) length

of chain-link fence stands on the ridge ovellooking the clash site' Here.

as at Oklahor¡ra Cit),, Colurnbine and the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial.

thousands of visitors leave their orvtr mcmorial offelings.

Such open commemoration bears ovelrvhelnling fruits. A large rvooden

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closs clorninates one sicle: nealb¡,, a plastic binder holcls a hanclwritten copy ofBook of Wisclonr, Chaptcr 3 ("But the souls of the just are in the hancl ol Gocl.

ancl the tolment of dcath shall not touch thenr"), alongside the Prayer of St.

Francis of Assisi ("O Divine Master. glant that I nray not so much seek to be

consoled as to co¡rsole: to be unclel'stoocl as to understancll to l¡e lovecl as 1o

love"). An oblong stone. painted black ancl inscribecl. "We lemember 5000+

victims." shares ground rvith a purple My Little Pony ancl a plastic Pooh Bear'.

Dozens of baseball caps hang fronr the fence. some personalizecl ancl others

only logos: The Anaheirn Angels. UCLA. VFW. Personalized license plates:

FREEDOM and USA4ME. A laminated story of "-I'he -Iì'adgety of 91 1," b¡,

eighth gracler Sarah Marie Re1,¡e1¿r. Stylized f'lags of the Pentagon and Tñin'lbrvels. American fìags. A stuffecl lion. White plastic crosses.

One homemade plaque leacls, "For our herocs of 9-11-01. Never forgetthern lest we lre attacked again. - Bob ancl Cheryl Hargest." That "lest."

stlangely archaic. ntakes remembrance an act uot just of preserving. butof constant vigilance. We rnust stand guald against fot'gettingl Santayana's

over-quoted maxinr about thosc rvho cannot remeurber the past beingdoomed to repeat it - or having it repeated against them.

Perha¡rs that "lest" alrests our moulning process at tlìe most basic levcl:"Neve r Folget." You'r,e seen this slogan. on l'-shilts. refrigeratol magnets,

rvall hangings, lapel pins, mousepads. Perhaps you've seen the iconicto\\,ers. superinrposed with an American fìag. encircled by a pentagon.Maybe you've noticed the oval. European-style bumper stickel reading"9/ll" and "Never Forget." And maybe )¡ou've seen the more ominousexpression. "Nevel'Forget, Never Folgive." We nrust rer¡renrber to never

Winter 200?, No. l?

FOR THOSE THREE, PERHAPS II ORI2 YEARS OLB ON SEPT. II, 2OOI,THE ANSWER TO THE OUESTION OF*TOO SOON' WAS, IN FACT, *TOO LATE.'

forget, the bumper stickel's. T-shirts, and nlagnets wat'tì tts ad infinitun-t

- I have a pen rvhich reads. "We Will Not Forget." follorved by "Texaco

Xpress Lube" ancl the business adcìress.

It seems strange. this collusion of grief and consurnerism, but "NeveL

Forget" has its comfort. It illustrâtes Eclwald Linenthal's cottcept of"venelative consunìption." September il nle morabilia, says the professor'

of history ancl leligious studies at Incliana University Bloomington.becomes both a sacled lelic and commercial cornmoclitlr The "Never

Forget" headband offers a way to expless soliclality rvith the victims

through the evcryday transactions of capitalist societ¡,.

But hou,does the litany against folgetting ntake rneaning ofSeptemberIl? As an affìrrnation of American values, "Never Forget" em¡rhasizes

capitalism and national unity. But otheru,ise it falls flat; those po¡t-cttlture

effluvia fail to aclvise us horv to remcmber.

In the immecliate aftern]ath of traged1,, such an uncontplicated lesponse

strikes us as appropliale. On the Penn State caurpus this April. follorving tlte

stuclent shooting at Virginia Tcch, "We Remember 4/l6107" T-shilts appealed

in a nratter of hours. simple declalations of empathlt "lt's alntost as if in the

early days there's not much else to sa¡'." ¡s Linenthal puts it. Yet seeing lhose

WHAT CAN A MEMOR¡AL ACCOMPLISH,BEYfIND TRIGEERINE MEMORIES OFTHE EVENT ITSELF?

same shirts six months late¡ worn with seemingly no more thought to theirmessage than to the average Abercrombie and Fitch polo, gives one pause.

What exactly do these casual commemorators wish to remember?

I put the question to James M. Kristan, who claims to have the largest

private collection of September 11 memorabilia in the world. "My collection

is a whole story in itself," he says. "It's indescribable. I've got at least 1,500

square feet of stuff laid out. I had to get â warehouse donated." Kristan's

documentary Moving On from 9/11, details his struggle with post-traumatic

stress syndrome following the attacks. He eventually made pilgrimages to

all three memorial sites; I met him in Shanksville, where his sleeveless shirtrevealed a shoulder-wide tattoo of the iconic towers, with the legend, "NeverForget 9-11-01." He'd driven 10 hours, straight from outside Grand Rapids,

and would drive back that same afternoon. He'd brought DVD copies of his

documentary which he described as his gift to the families.I asked Kristan what we should learn from six years'perspective. "I don't

know. I'd need a little time to ponder that." It seems important to note thatafter six years he - and we - still need a little time to ponder, to reflect.

Kristan later answered: "The most important thing about 9/11 is: Never

forget that horrible day. Never forget those heroes and everybody we lost, the

innocent victims to the senseless cowards the terrorists." The passage of time

brings distance but not perspective or clarity; we can only, it seems, "NeverForget." The process of commemoration stumbles after its first step.

SELECTIVE MEMORIESIncreasingly, we demand this kind of "instant memorialization," as DonStastny calls it, in which not-forgetting becomes the central duty. Stastny,

architect and adviser to the Flight 93 Memorial International Design

Competition, notes how in places such as Oklahoma City, Columbineand Virginia Tech, temporary memorials formed almost immediately.Permanent memorial designs appeared mere days later, often by thehundreds, as concerned citizens made themselves heard.

Yet in that rush to remember, Linenthal notes, "You're doing it so soon

that it's the first generation's take on the meaning of what happened, how thatmeaning should be represented, what should be remembered, what should be

forgotten, what can't be said that maybe could be said a hundred years later."Those permanent memorials by their nature stand for decades, and as firstdrafts of collective memory will have their blind spots, their telling lacunae.

What might we be able to say about September 11 that we cannot say

now? What might we learn if afforded the time and space - and perhaps

most importantly, the desire - to reflect? To offer but one example, TomJunod's Esquire article, "The Falling Man," details his quest to find the

subject of one iconic September 11 photo. As Junod describes the man, "lnthe picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has notchosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced

it. [...] His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures,

the people who did what he did - who jumped - appear to be struggling

against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdropof the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself." Globaltragedy has framed, not d\¡/arfed, this man's decision.

As Junod discovers, the photo's haunting intimacy - capturing the choice

of horrible, purposeful death over horrible, arbitrary death - proved toomuch for many viewers. Newspapers received angry letters from subscribers;

many press outlets self-censored the photo. Just as filmmakers had digitallyremoved the twin towers from movies released soon after September 11,

many editors chose to erase the Falling Man from our national memory.

Describing his ideal memorial, former New York Mayor Rudy Giulianisaid, "Those who visit should be able to relive the experience in a way

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that does justice to the enormity of the events." Such reliving would,

presumably, include the Falling Man; as cultural critic Slavoj Zizek says,

"The true choice apropos of historical trauma is not the one between

remembering and forgetting them: Traumas \¡/e are not able or ready toremember haunt us all the more forcefully. We should therefore accept the

paradox that, in order to really forget an event, we must first summon up

the strength to remember it properly."Remembrance, then, demands both strength and humility in the face

of enormous events. Even though, as Wyatt Mason points out, "The

destruction of the World Trade Center is the most exhaustively imaged

disaster in human histor¡" but the proliferation of images does littleto further our comprehension. We have not yet exhausted the possible

narratives, the stories we use to make sense.

The opposite, in fact; we continue to tell stories about that day. In New

York City, a group named StoryCorps has allied with the World Trade Center

Memorial Museum in an effort to record at least one oral history for every

life lost on September 11. Those stories,2,973 of them, offer a different kind

of memorial; they offer us voices preserved as though in ambel confronting

the simplest and most profound questions: "Can you tell me the story of what

happened to you on September l1th, 2001?" "What was your first thought

when you realized what was happening?" And of course, "What do you want

people in the future to know about what happened on 9/11?" None of these

questions promise simple answers, nor should they. Instead, they hope tospeak to human experience in a wây stone monuments, perhaps, cannot.

So often our speech stumbles when trying to comprehend September 11

- as Norman Mailer puts it, "We speak in simples as experience approaches

the enormous." We speak in simples, grasping at archetypes: The planes, the

towers. the terrorists. The heroes. The victims. Even our shorthand reduces

the enormous to the vaguely comprehensible: The events, the attacks, the

tragedy - or simply the date, 9/11. We speak of a mythical pre-9/11 world,

as though we are all the Falling Man, coloring our present with postlapsarian

menace. The Falling Man, despite our existential horror of him, is part of the

story. A story that continues to unfold.

FIIREBODINGS OF OZYMANDIASIf we cannot say what that story means to us, we can say even less about

what it may mean for generations to come. "A field of honor forever"

rings with admirable hope, but memory's half-life guarantees nothing lasts

forever. Our memorials may outlive us, may outlive the people we know,

but they may also outlive their meanitrg. We should acknowledge that ourplastic 9/11 pens may outlast their message.

As Stastny puts it, "Twenty years from now, when a new generation

comes to look at this, they may have absolutely no recognition of who the

people were, or what the real meaning of this place is. We ask our jurors

to look for designs that will still have validity, because they may bring

a certain point home." Call it the "Ozymandias" criterion, in honor ofShelley's famous sonnet on the fleeting nature of life and art: Permanent

memorials must carry their own meanings forward to generations who

have no direct experience on which to build their own stories.

In the story of Shanksville and Flight 93, I've already seen one memorial

fail the "Ozymandias" test: Paul Greengrass's United 93. On a Saturday

afternoon, I waited in line at the local Blockbuster. In front of me stood

three young men in cargo shorts, striped polo shirts and backwards baseball

caps. One of them leaned forward and asked the cashier, "Hey bro, is this

a good movie?" He turned the DVD case around: United 93.

"Uhm, well, it's about September 11..." the cashier began.

"OK, cool," the consumer replied, evidently pleased with his choice'

The three left the store without further discussion.

For those three, perhaps 11. or 72 years old on Sept. 11,2001, the answer

to the question of "too soon" was, in fact, "too late." For them, the events

of September 11 had already taken on the sepia shade of distant history.

www.americanclty.org

Like World War II, it was an event mined for entertainment, whether thefinal production had the earnest reverence of. Saving Private Ryan, lhetestosterone-fueled explosiveness of Pearl Harbor,or thepop-intellectualismofa Ken Burns documentary. "Never Forget" holds no power here.

What, then, can a memorial accomplish, beyond triggering memories of theevent itself? For Stastny, a memorial should be "experiential" - marked byspace and reflection - rather than "objective" - the typically monumentalmemorial. A useful memorial, in other words, speaks to the living, offeringmore than an unapproachable headstone. For Linenthal, such reflectionprovokes the "hope that visitors will not only remember the dead in theseparticular situations and what they've done, but also extend that sense ofcaring to victims of terrorism and political violence around the world."

I¡ISSENTING VOICESFor the September 1.1. memorials, such expansive empathy seems unlikely.Early plans for the World Trade Center site included an InternationalFreedom Center museum. It would have staged exhibits on variousgenocides and crimes against humanity to illustrate the difficult process

of establishing "international freedom." Critics balked at placing theSeptember l.l. attacks within a larger struggle for freedom, however, withThe New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff declaring themuseum's design "Orwellian," a "theme-park view of American ideals inan alluring wrapper." After much politicking, then-New York GovernorGeorge Pataki banned the IFC from the World Trade Center site.

Of course, the practicalities of memorial-building influenced his decision.Fundraising for a $3 billion dollar rebuilding has enough challenges withoutadding a controversial design to the mix. Developer Larry Silverstein'sinsurance settlement following September 11 paid $1 billion, supplementedby $ZSO million from the State of New York and another $1 billion in bondsissued by New York's Port Authority. (Such impressive sums tend to attractintense scrutiny; MSNBC's David Shuster, for one, has questioned theimpartiality of the design competition, suggesting Pataki exerted influencein exchange for political donations.) New York Mayor Michael Bloomberghas stepped in, helping raise over $165 million. Potential major donors suchas Cantor Fitzgerald and PricewaterhouseCoopers have withheld donations,however, until the grouping of victims' names has been determined. ThePentagon memorial hopes to raise $32 million, but large donations have comeslowly. And in Shanksville, the initial fundraising brought in only $i0.4 million

- in two years. The National Park Service has taken ove¡ hoping for at least

$30 million. But as time passes, donations only get harder to come by.

One memorial outside any of the crash sites does include multiple voices,despite the difficult political-economic environment. In Phoenix, Arizona,a state-sponsored 9/11 memorial included panels that put the attacks intohistorical context. Among the inscriptions, visitors read, "Middle Eastviolence motivates attacks in US," "Foreign-born Americans afraid" and"Terrorist organization leader addresses American people." Needless tosay, the inclusion of such timely, newspaper-headline sentiments provokedcontroversy. When right-wing bloggers quickly denounced the memorial,Arizona governor Janet Napolitano responded, "This Memorial is unique,bold, dynamic, educational and unforgettable. The thoughts and remarksetched in stone will serve as learning tools for all of us, our children and ourchildren's children." That memory and thought might work in concord seems

to have struck many as anathema to "Never Forget."The Flight 93 permanent memorial has its own unintended controversy,

whipped up primarily by Califomia blogger Alec Rawls. Architect PaulMurdoch originally titled the maple-tree landscape in his design, "The

THAT'S WHERE THE PLANE CAMEIIOWN. SEE HfIW THE HEMLOCKSARE BURNEB?

Crescent of Embrace." Rawls claims the design celebrates the Muslimhijackers of Flight 93, the crescent is a symbol of Islam and oriented towardMecca. Tom Burnett Sr., father of one of the victims, agees: "I told them

we'd be a laughingstock if we did this," he said tothe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Burnett has refused to allow his son's name to be used in the memorial.Mike Rosen of. the Rocky Mountain Neps offered a simple solution:

"Just come up with a different design that eliminates the double meaningand the dispute." Double meaning, for Rosen, is one meaning too many.

For him, disputation has no place in memorial.The World Tiade Center site has taken a similar approach.ln 9/11: The

Culture of Commemoration, David Simpson describes the design as "an orgyof nomination: the 'Park of Heroes,' the 'Wedge of Light,' the 'Garden ofthe World,' 'Memory's Eternal Foundation"' - all overseen, of course, bythe 1,776-foot Freedom Tower. Presumably there's no misinterpreting thatsingular message. Yet, Simpson wonders, what depth of reflection can such

a memorial provoke? "One might think that any democracy requiring thissort of browbeating in the name of architecture must be in deep trouble,"he writes. Democratic memorials might dare to risk multiple meanings. Theymight dare to invite active participation - reverential to be sure, but with an

understanding that debate and discussion also serve memory.

For former New York Governor Pataki, howeve¡ "In the end, there is

no right way to remember. It is only right that we remember" - a slightexpansion upon "Never Forget." Again one thinks of the Ozymandiascriterion, imagining "the decay / Of that colossal wreck" at the third orfourth centenary of the Freedom Tower, its names worn smooth by time,What then will it mean?

It's unsurprising that a politician would evade such a question, but thatdoesn't mean we all get off so easily. "Never Forget" marks a beginning,

not an end. As long as people can share it, the process of memory is never

complete, always in contestation, necessarily unstable. As Stastny puts it, "Ithink a memorial, like a city, is never finished."

A TWICE-TOLB TALEWe remember in stone and in story; neither lasts forever. All memorialsare temporâry, subject to the ravages of time. Shanksville, for now, has

no elaborate cenotaphs, no Freedom Tower stretching for the sky. The

fence collects its tributes; benches record the passengers'names. There

is a small wooden building, not much bigger than the average bathroom.It offers shelter from the wind, the breath that always blows here, always

animating, always threatening to erase.

On the coldest days, the Flight 93 Ambassadors huddle inside thishumble outpost. There you'll find them, ready to tell the story. When Ivisited in January, I found Emily Jerich and her husband, Stan, waiting.

She asked whether I'd heard "the story." I had, many times, from manydifferent sources, and I learned to appreciate them as variations on a

theme - not "the" story, but a collection of voices, reading from the

same event, each with its own rhythms and revelations. The stories were

extended names, ways of finding home in an event so challenging to ourcomprehension. Admixtures of dread and hope, they did not try to deny

time, but only to understand it, to find a place within it.Jerich recounted her version of the story emphasizing a Bible found in

the wreckage, not open to a particular page as some claim, but flapping

in the wind. She speaks in conditionals: If the plane had waited only fourminutes, if it had flown only three more seconds. Had it waited four minutes,the plane would have been grounded. Had it flown for three more seconds,

it might've struck Shanksville's only school. She calls her ambassadorship

a duty, is proud and humbled "To be here, to guard the place, to tell thestory." Late¡ another ambassador arrives, Sue Strohm. She tells a less

detailed version of the story saying she realizes she's there to listen as muchas to speak. "The plane went over everybody's house," she says.

And everyone has their story. fl

Wlnter 200?, No. l?