...we asked you for your favorite quotes on memorials and monuments. Today, we'll talk to Ryan Coonerty about his book "Etched in Stone: Enduring Words from Our Nation's Monuments." To see pictures from the book, and perhaps to spark your own memory of what has moved you (I love the U.S. Post Office in New York -- "Neither snow nor rain nor heat...") check them out here.
9:47 AM ET | 03-28-2007 | permalink
At the Boise, Idaho Veteran's Administration hospital there is a stone at the entrance that proclaims,"The Price of Freedom is Visible Here."
My wife (a family physician) and I have often schemed about replacing the word, "Freedom" with "Smoking" to more accurately reflect the reality seen within the hospital's walls.
Keep up the great work Neal.
Michael J. Devitt, Boise
I've seen this inscribed on various memorials in small towns on memorials for American soldiers who died in foreign wars: "We were young. We died.
Remember us." So short, yet so meaningful and memorable.
When I went to Brigham young university there was a sign at the netrance that said "enter to learn, go forth to serve."
The inside joke at the school was what they really meant was "enter to learn, go forth to earn"
The Robert Taft Memorial and Carillon across the street from the US Capitol has this quote: "Let us not forget that the state is the servant of the people, and that the people are not the servants of the state.
I don't have a favorite quote from a monument but I have a fovorite song lyric about monuments. It's from Van Morrison's song Tupelo Honey. The line goes like this,"Men with insight, men in granite, knights in armour bent on chivalry." I believe smeone else might have quoted another line from this song that went like this, "you can't stop us on the road to fredom, you can't stop us cause our eyes can see." If Van's words aren't on a monument yet, they should be. I think he's quite profound.
Hello, Neal, what a great show you have. My son is now 47 and a very successul engineer at Lockheed. When he grad. from college, this is the saying I sent him. . ."My interest is in the future, because that is where I am going to spend the rest of my life." Unknown June Brink
I am definitely biased being an archivist myself, but the quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest "What is past is prologue," inscribed on a statue at the National Archives is one of my all-time favorites.
I was awe struck by the war memeorial in Columbus Indiana described by its designer, Maryanne Thompson as follows:
"Names of the one hundred and fifty-six veterans from Bartholomew County who gave their lives are carved onto the sides of the pillars. Letters and journals written by these soldiers are carved into the pillars. Viewers experience a layered passage into the heart of the grid of pillars in which the recorded experience of the veterans becomes more and more intimate as one delves deeper into the space. The memorial honors the veterans from the County and demonstrates their shared, unifying experience. It frames the regrettable events and effects of war within the contemporary culture of the county, and allows future generations to powerfully understand the histories of their families, county, and country."
An image of the memorial can be seen at:http://www.maryannthompson.com/projects/proj7a.html
In San Francisco, at the street corners, the street names are etched into the concrete of the sidwalk. This is a daily reminder of the 1906 earthquake; the purpose of putting the street names in the concrete is in the case of such devastation that familiar landmarks are gone.
Also, in San Francisco, we cherish our MLK memorial, which includes a walkway behind a cascading wall of water. MLKs words about righteousness flowing down, are, of course, featured, as are other of his words, translated into numerous lannguages, including Hebbrew, Tagolog, Japanese, etc.
I know tis is Canada, but theres a great inscription on the wall of the Whitehorse Daily News in Whitehorse, YT..
"Non Illigitemus Carborudum"
..."Don't let the bastards wear you down."
There is one quotation on the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial that does not list the author. The quotation begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." The quotation is from the Declaration of Independence and the author, of course, is Thomas Jefferson. But the Idaho Human Rights Commission apparently decided Jefferson was not moral enough to have attribution for his work.
"Greater Love Hath No Man"
from the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne Australia.
The Stone is aligned with an aperture in the roof of the Sanctuary so that a ray of sunlight falls on the word LOVE on the Stone of Remembrance at exactly 11am on 11 November, marking the hour and day of the Armistice which ended World War I.
Along with inspiring words, the arrangement of names on memorials influences emotional impact. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial organizes names chronologically by date of causualty, so people who died in the same battle are listed together. Survivors can find the names of their comrades in one place on the Wall.
A different arrangement achieves the same result at the Memorial to the Missing of the Sommme in Thiepval France. Here the names are arranged by regiment. British regiments in WWI were organized by home town, so this arrangement keeps friends together and allows neighbors to visit one area of the memorial.
In contrast the proposed random arrangement of the proposed World Trade Center Memorial in New York will separate associated names and force visitors to interact with an index for each name.
I am exploring these issues in my blog IsisInBlog at www.bloglines.com/blog/isisinblog
The Idaho Ann Frank Human Rights Memorial is one of the coolest monuments I've seen. Whenever we have company we bring take them to see it. It has quotes from leaders across the world and time that express Human Rights in different ways, from Ann Frank to Helen Keller to Cheif Joseph to Pearl S. Buck. A great tribute to Human Rights.
What I meant to say...I called regarding the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise ID, and obliquely mentioned that the monument was erected in part to counter Idaho's "undeserved reputation" or something like that--more specifically, I meant to say that the memorial was, in part, a reply to the presence of the Aryan Nations compound in northern Idaho in the 1990s.(Thankfully, the neo-nazis were sued into bankrptcy in 2000 after assaulting a woman and her son near the compound.) More information on the memorial is available at http://www.idaho-humanrights.org/Memorial/memorial.html
One of my favorite stone-etched quotes is Rachel Carson's "Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts" in San Francisco's Civic Center.
In response to a caller today, Neal mentioned that Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was a VMI graduate. He actually was a professor at VMI before the Civil War, but was a 1846 Graduate of the USMA at West Point. Aside from that, the show today was excellent. as usual.
Last fall my British husband and I were married in London. While looking for a nearby outdoor place suitable for wedding photos, we came across a wooden structure in Grosvenor Square which seemed to offer a pleasant backdrop for pictures. That is, until I noticed the inscription: "Grief is the price we pay for love." It was then I realized I was looking at a 9/11 Memorial. While a bit morbid-sounding, the phrase struck me as appropriate - as someone preparing to enter into a lifetime commitment, I was reminded that to love is to make oneself vulnerable. But we chose to take our pictures somewhere else :).
I didn't hear the show (wish I did), and maybe this one got a mention there, but to my mind, it's hard to beat Lincoln's Second Innaugural Address at the Lincoln Memorial. We were visitors to DC two weeks ago when there were protestors and counterprotestors all around the building (I was merely a tourist with my 8 and 11-year-old boys). Those words of Abe's, referring to the occasion 4 years previous, when "the war came" sent me into tears.
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