Maya Lin thanks for all your terrific work — I suppose I’m on the James Young continuum regarding memorial work meaning that work is in the production to be sure but also in the conversation leading to the presentation of memorial. It’s difficult, I’m sure, to memorialize while in the active business of re-membering, literally reconstructing in physical form. What does it mean to stand in the shadow of the wall (vietnam) & regard iraq and afghanistan? thanks! Jeanie

Humans are a very destructive and arrogant species.

We can’t create one new life form.

Yet we are destroying millions with little thought or care.

Gone. Forever.

Maya, no matter how beautiful of a memorial you create and no matter how moved people are they won’t change their way of life one bit to save a species from destruction. We are that selfish.

I can see the path we are going down and at the end of it is our own extinction.

Wonderful work by Maya Lin – thank you! It is so important to understand how badly we are wrecking the planet and its life.
Now many scientists are beginning to think about the possibility – no, the probability – of our own extinction. It’ll only be when people are seriously frightened for themselves, their grandchildren, the heritage they could leave. A memorial to ourselves will make the point in a way that will be even harder to avoid hearing.
Thanks once again for your work.

Reminds me of the Lorax…

Can the monument travel? This needs to be experienced everywhere!

Maya,

Thank you for the VM. For 10 years I rode my bike to work from Arlington to DOC – crossing over memorial bridge and up the mall. On rainy cold winter days I would get off my bike and walk along the VM. The memorial in rain is amazing! Add the hush created from the cars wheel wells in the rain create an amazing silence and is truly inspiring. When I tell this story I still get goose-bumps thinking back to it.

I now live in NY’s Adirondack Park and miss my ride by the VM. But my new home puts me in touch with your new effort. Something I will share with my 7 year old son who actually gets the fact that man is impacting nature, even to extinction.

The google effort sounds amazing. As we see things greatly change in the Adirondack preserve and hope to contribute to your effort in the future.

Scott Johnson

To make my point.

The vanishing of the honey bees and other pollinators.

One out of every three bits we take including most fruits and vegetables we wouldn’t have without them.

Cell phones have been suspect in their decline. A study concluded that due the electromagnetic waves from the towers shorted out the navigational abilities of worker bees so that they couldn’t find their way home after going out to collect pollen.

Yet if it were to be proven that cell phones were killing off our bees would we all give up our cell phones to save the bees?

I would bet my life we wouldn’t.

My God, you’re brave. This is so important, but it absolutely breaks my heart to hear these animals and to think about so many heading toward extinction. How can we bear to think about it every day…but more importantly, how can we not? Thank you.

I went looking for the loon this fall in the Adirondacks.

Only found one.

Usually in the fall I can find one pair per lake.

Thank you for this show. Thank you Maya Lin for your work. The recordings are beautiful, and so moving. I hope to see the memorial with my kids someday. And I am glad that you talked about the wake-up call aspect of the art being more important than using it simply as a vehicle for mourning species already extinct. I hope organizations, citizens and government will learn enough from the memorial to want to take action to save habitats.

Great program! My thought is there needs to be balance in the protection of plants and creatures in the enviornment. Case in point being shuting down agriculture in the California central valley to protect a fish that has no true redeming value.

Kirk Merritt
Nokomis, FL

beautiful sensitive program!
yes the meadowlark is missing!
we grow a few blueberry bushes and have some blueberries each year.
the meadowlarks are always present for the good pickings.
but now the meadowlarks seem to be missing!

Two comments:
First, to Kirk: the fact that you can not cite any redeeming value for the fish you mentioned only indicates your own lack of knowledge, not the lack of value of the fish. Everything in nature has a purpose, even if we don’t understand what it is at the moment.

Second, regarding the Vietnam monument; my experience of it has been less personal; instead, I find myself mourning for a nation that still doesn’t understand why it fought that war that cost so much. And as I walk downward into the monument, everything else in the world gets shut out, just as descent into the Vietnam quagmire shut out so much that was promising, till the deaths and now this giant tombstone enveloped and envelop our entire consciousness.

I am deeply touched by listening to Ms. Lin, and her reflections on her work and her process. She has been part of the inspiration of a memorial project I have begun to memorialize the lives lost in Iraq…all lives lost…not just our soldiers. I have seen through her work how powerful the visual can be to comprehend. Thank you for this show.

As a former Enrichment Coordinator Teacher, I am listening to your story and thinking what a wonderful authentic project this would be for students of all ages with their grandparents to work on the Map of History together.

We try to engage young and old, and this would be an opportunity for grandparents to tell their grandchildren about sounds and sights that they no longer hear or see due to the habitat and environment change. Then they coiuld work on the map together – what possibilities: habitat study, biology, inter=generational projects.

Thanks,
Lenore

Thank you for your living memorials. I join you in your activism for peace, women, civil rights, species, and the entire earth. Your hopeful vision of remembering and sustaining our precious planet and all of its member subjects is a veautiful expression of universal love.

The big aching picture! Thanks for this program, Tom – and more particularly thanks, Maya Lin. The collective wound listening to itself catalized by hearing about your current work calls us home, the place we need to be to keep our bearings in this ‘what is missing?’ reflection.

Maya Lin,

Thank you for reminding me that I am not alone in my intense passion for trying to refocus the thoughts of humans on this planet from our quest for ‘creature comforts’, to the needs of wildlife, be it flora or fauna, for simple survival. Your project will put many, many folks who otherwise may not venture out into the natural world, in touch with a part of them that they may not even be aware of-which is we are all a part of the web of life. (Yes, Kirk, every life form on the planet has ‘redeeming value’). If we do not listen to this beckoning call, it will be at our own peril.

Much success with your project!

Loss of habitat, toxicity, and foolish shortsighted industrial and commercial practices has changed the world I live in in my short lifetime (though I am pretty ‘old’ it is short on the grand scale). And it isn’t just on land. Consider the ocean and her new ‘continent of toxic plastic, guaranteed to last for generations, unless we do something. And with Ms Lin’s (and others) inspiration, maybe we can solve it.
Incurable optimist,
Bev

First of all, a comment before my main comment: Thanks to Alan Shulman for responding to what Kirk said. Ecosystems are so delicate; an upset, no matter how ostensibly slight, can send a negative reverberation throughout the natural world. Often, after it is too late do we only recognize the ramifications and true cost of not thinking holistically.

To the Vietnam Memorial: I lived near the complex known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for 20 years. The main structure, the VVM Wall, was finished in 1982, if my memory serves me correctly. It created quite a lot of controversy when the design was first presented to the public, so much so that another sculpture was added to the design to calm the storm. The Three Soldiers statue, which was more in an heroic tradition of war memorial statues, was added. Later, to honor the women who served in the war, most of whom were nurses, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was added to the complex. That design, although traditional and representative, also carried some controversy and was changed twice I think. I remember those stories transpiring as such from articles in the Washington Post and from various discussions at work, at the time.

I am so glad Maya Lin’s design was not abandoned. The controversy quickly faded as people began to visit the Wall. I believe its design and impact says something about our need for abstraction in our lives. The other memorials there are beautiful, and there is a need for those kinds of traditional memorials (the Iwo Jima Memorial is also near there in Arlington, Va., and a 3/4 size copy is farther south at the marine base at Quantico, Va.). Sometimes, though, traditional art hits our intellect too quickly and can impose on us what we are supposed to think and feel. Abstract art can sometimes first permeate our beings viscerally and bring forth emotion before our intellects have a chance to respond. Anyone who has visited the VVM Wall can attest to how powerful a structure it is and how readily one can be overcome with emotion in its midst.

Maya Lin’s piece, “What is MIssing?” looks and sounds like a memorial sculpture of great importance. One I hope to see some day. I think the design is brilliant! The audio portions sampled on this program were sublime.

Thank you, Tom/On Point, for a fine show, and thanks to Maya Lin for not only bringing great art and architecture to the world, but also for being an artist, with all that that truly means. I enjoyed hearing her speak. When I was in my thirties I thought that art was dead, or at least in a moribund state. I no longer feel that way. It would behoove society to pay very close attention to artists these days. They often are way ahead of the curve, and many are leading us toward an evolved consciousness.

Maya Lin has discovered and is using a powerful force to help us “experience” rather than think about emotional and spiritual things. Very, very few of us really grasp the extent to which language dominates the brain, and prevents access to non-verbal experiences. When you decend the black wedge into Maya’s war memorial, the tears appear like majic on your face, and no words can express the experience.

She now extends this basic principle to all auditory and visual experience. Thanks you Maya…

Thankyou Ms. lin for the public empathy you generated;it was a moving inspiration to-finally listen to someone with a real Heart and Human values. I genuinely hope you don’t have to design a memorial for earth; the jewel of the cosmos, now in the early-to-mid stages of morbidity, just waiting for either a major nuclear chain reaction or some other human folly of self-destruction. It seems to me that Religion, once the savior of the soul, is now one of the major destroyers of happiness and life. How sad is it that those who believe in God are so willingly delighted to destroy the Creation of our living Heavenly Home.

Our thanks to Maya Lin for all her work, her attention to what really matters. In the interview, there was something about balancing our own (human) needs with the needs of the planet. Yes, this can be done, if we all pay attention to what we truly NEED, rather than simply want. That would be a huge awakening for this consumer culture, a necesary awakening to give this wanderful planet, our home, a chance to continue giving us its gifts.

Oh Maya, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this work! Timing, urgent and relevant! I train volunteer naturalists for Bernheim Arboretum and discuss with each new group of trainies how greater awareness of nature’s diversity in a double-edged sword. We take delight in learning to hear the woodthrush in the eveing woods or a close encounter with a tiny red eft; and then multiple our joy in these by sharing what we notice with others.

But such noticing also means that we have entered into a contract of sorts with that which we notice; we now have an imperative to bear witness to what comes up missing in our woods, fields and lives. Writer Robert Michael Pyle suggest that “the depletion of encounters with other species anounts to an extension of experience,” one that not only threatens neighborhoods species by also human perception of the natural world.

How can places like Bernheim particpate in this memorial?

Thank you, Maya Lin, for all you have done in this tattered world. Your art, your clear thinking, your humanity are truly inspiring. I am a Vietnam veteran. Thank you, too, for the deep respect you have shown our fallen brothers and sisters. By honoring them, you have honored us all. Finally, thank you for helping to bring me home. Probably, I could have done it without your art, but your art truly helped make the coming home a transcendent experience. Hoa binh. (Peace.)

****A memorial to ourselves will make the point in a way that will be even harder to avoid hearing****

Posted by Julian Cole, on November 2nd, 2009 at 11:27 am EST****

So true, we would hope this can awaken our consciousness and conscience toward the great nature. But you know, there is always another group of people don’t believe this because they are too lazy to change their way of life, and don’t believe this is a serious problem. They choose to do nothing about it until governments step in. That’s why Copenhagen meeting is so important, we need to get involve to get our concerned voice out there so the whole world knows there are billions of people support protecting, restoring nature, and minimize our carbon drastically. We as regular daily working people can be powerful if we all stick together and be persistent.

I have watched a good amount of environmental or global warming related films. “The 11th Hour” produced by Leonardo DeCaprio really stuck with me. It is those people he interviewed, and the Biomimicry ideas toward the end offer some really mind opening possible solutions. Especially if you watch the bonus feature, more possible solutions are discussed in it.