Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 23:44:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein <> Several items...Joe Wright's verbatim query,at his request: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:46:07 -0400 From: Joe Wright <4joewright@att.net> To: Louis Epstein Joe Wright has asked me to poll the members of this e-mail group on two questions: (1) Would you like to see a full-page ad in the NY Times supporting rebuilding the twin towers as tall or taller? (2) Would you be willing to donate $100 or more to pay for the ad? The cost ranges from $ 95,000 to $ 112,000 (depending on the day of week and whether ad runs nationally or locally) plus the cost of producing the ad. ---------- End forwarded message ---------- The table/petition volunteers will be getting together at Gary Taustine's place on Sunday,as noted previously...I can put anyone who wants to get involved in touch. Richard Krasney's "Soaring Coalition" is *also* holding a meeting the same day,I'm not sure how far away...they are intent on incorporating a nonprofit with similar goals to those already offered on this email list and by others. I worry a bit about parallel efforts making it impossible for any one of them to achieve "critical mass".I hesitated on Dina Sikora's suggestion a few months ago that the WTCRM incorporate as a non-profit since TTT had already determined to go that route,and I didn't see the need for multiple groups approaching the same issues from the same angle. I realize this may come across as jealousy over stolen thunder, with these people just convening to do the same things I've been pushing for months and months,and as spitefully diminishing their joy-of-foundership.I'm certainly not trying to take any wind out of their sails,all supporters of not-one-inch-shorter construction at the site need as much wind behind them as possible.Just concerned as to how efforts can be focussed most productively.They are all on or welcome to join this email list and I will report any responses as needed and notify everyone of their activities...the Sunday meeting is suppose to finalize their "mission statement". Jennifer Thorpe did a little standing-leafletting this week, handing out printouts of the Team Twin Towers "Reasons to Rebuild". She reports that they went faster than she expected. In planning for new Twin Towers or other structures of the same scale on the site we've mentioned not wanting the antenna height to be any shorter than that of the antenna on the old North Tower, but if there isn't a commitment to tall towers on the site soon there may not even be an antenna (ensuring national bragging rights on an asterisk basis for the Sears Tower unless we can somehow get a structure with a roofline or at least structural tip of at least 1730 feet).The metropolitan broadcasters are now probably going to establish a self-supporting tower of around 2000 feet (taller than the CN Tower or its rival in Indonesia) in New Jersey. Further,it will likely have an observation deck that could well be higher than the CN Tower's world's-tallest Sky Pod,though I have not seen a specific height...this could cause serious tourist-dollar competition for the new Towers and thus hurt their chances of getting built. In coming years broadcasters will be required to switch from NTSC to HDTV transmissions,which involves switching antenna hardware,but it's unlikely that they would put up the New Jersey mast with the intention of moving its operations to a new Manhattan antenna. We can only hope (and push for) there being some broadcasters wanting their transmissions in each location,and desire for backup in case of one antenna being out of service.We need to keep this issue in mind. An amusing thing on the September's Mission site...its text has now been revised to edit out reference to the fact that Felicia Morton, their Director of Communications,is Monica Iken's sister.They left an errant comma in while striking that text.They also no longer express acknowledgements to Rebecca Kay,the woman from Maryland who originally set up their web domain,not sure why. They don't seem to be planning more fundraisers at the moment. Speaking of fundraisers,the Team Twin Towers event was still set for August 14th last I heard,I will pass on any details I learn (not sdure of exactly where in the Los Angeles area it will be). I have of course continued to keep a close eye on the Online-LTTC. They have moved on to discussion of the memorial elements themselves, and will probably be posting poll questions based on the "Elements of Rebuilding" and other "Revitalization" topics soon,with results a bit thereafter that will regrettably knock the high percentage wanting towers as tall or taller off the display page. They appear to have closed the loophole that let those of us who filled out registration forms but were forbidden to participate to nonetheless vote. Group 23 appears to have people lining up to slam the Towers and no one defending them.Lucky that's not typical! There's no question that many participants have agendas that are not bent by contrary views.(Well,the same can be said of us when it comes to the need for tall towers).The idea of burying West Street to connect Battery Park City to the rest of Manhattan is pushed over the strong opposition of participants who actually live there,who consider their relative isolation to be a defining characteristic of their neighborhood and quality of life,and point out that being cut off from the express lanes of West Street would slow their access to emergency services. Likewise,someone who wrote of liking to ride a bicycle in the evening on the deserted streets of the financial district was called "sick" by an apostle of the create-a-24-hour-community goal.More determination to eradicate unwanted diversity in the name of promoting diversity everywhere...as I said before,the goal seems to be "an exactly equal amount of diversity enforced on every streetcorner".No neighborhoods with distinct characteristics of local industry,or income level of residents,for example. The street-grid-restoration advocates are reaping what they sow when it comes to Memorial layout.Every one of the six roasted plans slams Greenwich Street all the way throuhg the site,and for all the problems that causes hardly anyone breathes a word of blame.People speak of "wanting to integrate the memorial with the rest of the site",but with Greenwich Street running south of Fulton you just can't do that.It forms a natural dividing line between the office buildings and the memorial,and makes the office buildings blend into the surrounding cityscape east of Church Street...it essentially negates the idea of an "entire site" that remains recognizable as such. As I've noted before,running Greenwich Street south of Fulton also constitutes the greatest obstacle to compromises on the footprints,or even to the safely-back-from-roads placement of buildings that DON'T touch the footprints. I've continued to refine the notional site plan in my head (with due respect to those any of you may favor,any plan that regains the lost height completely is better than any that does not!) though I would need help to refine it into a professional-looking submission to try to force into public discussion. I like the idea of new Twins displaced about 90% east and 10% (or a little more) north from the old footprints,the unused bulk of the old footprints sunken into the ground as part of the memorial,with gardens,fountains,etc....a deliberate architectural effect of the new Towers being "dislocated" from their foundations,as if by a great earthquake,and yet whole. As I have said,the existence of SOME overlap with the old footprints is a critical symbolic repudiation of the murderers' asserted right to deny our right to build where we please. To leave the footprints completely vacant is glorification of the killers' legacy and a disgrace to their victims. While preserving the memory of the fallen we must deny their killers an undeserved legacy...we can not bring back the dead but that does not mean we can not take back anything taken from us. Anti-rebuilders accuse rebuilders of wanting to bring back the past; but September 10th 2001 and September 11th 2001 are BOTH in the past now,and attempting to freeze the site in the likeness of either day is equally anchored in the past.New York's future has always been expressed by building taller buildings. To return to my vision of the memorial...I am perplexed by the occasional Online-LTTC participant who says "I want a memorial, but not a 9/11 museum".Clearly I think an indoor museum has to be the main structure of the memorial,for all the outdoor components. Some future September 11ths will have miserable weather,even if it's sunny up on top of the skyline in the potential rooftop memorial gardens on the new Towers.And much more can be done indoors than out. As I noted previously I see the memorial museum on the site previously occupied by the hotel,flanked by outdoor memorials to the dead at the Pentagon and Shanksville.There should not be an everyone-who-died-that-day memorial at each site,the FOCUS of each site's memorial should be those who died THERE on September 11th 2001.I mentioned before the contents of the museum. I was interested to read on the Online-LTTC a complaint by a former WTC tenant about the massive security measures that made getting visitors and job applicants admitted to offices "like pulling teeth".I hope that the future does NOT hold eternal treatment of those in public places like potential terrorists; we need security,but we also need to be welcoming.I hope that future observation deck and restaurant visitors,as well as those coming to the Towers to do business,as able to achieve their goals as easily as can be rationally managed. I note someone posted at the CBSNewYork message board (linked from my resource page at http://www.put.com/wtc/ of course) that the Lotte World tower in Pusan,South Korea (1524 feet tall) may be getting back on track for possible 2010 completion. It's been stalled before,but it's another reason to build tall! (The news story incorrectly forecasts dethroning Petronas as world's tallest.Taipei Financial Center is taller than the Lotte World project measured to structural tip and is already building). As always I urge one and all to semd site plan comments! The resource page now includes the Whitehead clique's fax number to provide another channel for sending them. My own commentaries,when complete,will be sent to the list as has been the case for previous phases. Let's not fall into either despondency or complacency, but keep fighting! See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11! -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.