GO SLOW :

The art of honoring the dead: Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, reflects in Newsweek about how best to commemorate the victims of the 9/11 attacks. (Newsweek, 9/14/02)

NOW BASED IN New York City, where she works as an architect and a sculptor, Lin doubts she'll compete to design the memorial for the World Trade Center, though she's given advice when asked. "All I've said so far is that I've gone through a certain experience, and if that experience will help, I'm here," she says. Her key words of wisdom: slow down. "We rush very quickly to memorialize things," says Lin. "I think the passage of time helps."

I remain deeply ambivalent about Ms Lin's Vietnam Memorial. It's a disgrace to commemorate the men and women who fought in that noble cause with only a gaping scar in the ground, but it's undeniably moving to walk through it and the people themselves have turned it into a fitting tribute by leaving flags, candles, letters, medals and other souvenirs to honor the dead. It seems that there should be a facing wall that lists the millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians who were murdered by despotic regimes because we did not stay to finish the war and a list of every congressman who voted to cut off aid to South Vietnam in 1975, betraying an innocent ally and sentencing her people to death and devastation, the high price paid for America's moral cowardice.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 6, 2002 4:20 PM