Quote:
Originally Posted by philatonian
The One Meridian memorial at the Ritz makes sense. Three bronze plaques between the two buildings. This is just weirdly macabre...in, like, a dystopic kind of way. It looks like a memorial on Battlestar Galactica.
It's really hard to criticize a memorial without sounding sympathetic, but I don't get why every tragedy needs to be memorialized with this level of visibility. If we memorialized every tragedy in Philadelphia we wouldn't be able to turn a corner without being sad. Like you said, a park that's a memorial would be better than this. There's nothing about this that makes it a park. I don't even see a bench.
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...and the One Meridian site memorializes fire fighters killed in the line of duty. That makes eminent sense. As bad as this building collapse was on so many levels, these folks were accident victims (resulting from the negligence of workers and government). Why do they merit more attention that that poor little girl killed by the Rita's security grate on Girard Ave. (which involved similar negligence)? It's really sentimentality without substance -- but I stop here before launching into a diatribe about the present state of our culture. However, I will note that L&I is busy running around closing beer gardens. I feel much safer.