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A meandering, ragged argument

"As can be seen from this image of the proposed design, the 'crescent' began as a meandering, ragged semicircle," notes truth seeker Gowain of Texas, This I Know, [via Watching Washington].

"It amazes me that someone would decide to work out whether it was facing Mecca," writes the proprietor of The Auroran Sunset Diary in one of 614 posts tagged to "crescent of embrace" at Technorati this morning. It reminded us of that New Yorker cartoon from way back when where one fish says to the other:

The thing that surprised me wasn't that we're endangered, but that we're snail darters.

Parallel worlds are out there. For more perspective on where the designers of the Flight 93 Memorial were coming from, here's an early iteration of their rationale for the much maligned maple grove from Paul Murdoch Architects'/Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects' Stage I proposal (above image):

The design embraces the place and memory of Flight 93 of the Ridge.  A curving arc of maple trees along a walkway unites the Ridge and forms an edge to the bowl, with a focus on the Sacred Ground. This Crescent of Embrace uses the monumental scale of the landscape to commemorate the heroic actions of the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

While re recognize that most interested parties have already made up their minds about an alleged dhimmitudinous landscape gestural nod to Mecca on the part of the designers, the fact is that even if one accepts the notion of alignment of the maple grove's axis with that holiest of all holy places amongst Islamicist terrorists, the [how we hate the name] "Crescent of Embrace" bows down not towards, but away from 21n27/39e49.

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

Getting up to speed on azimuthal equidistant projections

Look, Ma, #2. We've calculated our own qibla direction for the unfortunately named "Crescent of Embrace" at the heart of the Flight 93 Memorial design dispute. Technical note:  We got the latitude and longitude for Shanksville here and then plugged in the numbers and calculated the direction of Mecca from the Pennsylvania site here.  Then we overlaid the qibla diabram onto the memorial plan.

Thanks to reader Voice of Reason of Politicalities in the comments to our previous post, we were able to figure out for ourselves the qibla direction (towards Mecca) that had so dazzled Wretchard of The Belmont Club when he discovered that a line running through the center of the circle of which the "Crescent of Embrace" is a part, perpendicular to a line drawn between the bitter endpoints of the "Crescent," coincided with the qibla direction from the Shanksville, Pennsylvania site. See this image for what Voice of Reason describes as "an azimuthal equidistant projection of the globe centered on the Flight 93 crash site."

Very interesting, although even if you buy the premise of artistic intent, the "Crescent" would appear to be facing away from rather than toward Mecca. We'd love to hear what the landscape architect Warren T. Byrd, Jr., thinks about it all, but so far he hasn't gotten back to us, and as Michelle Malkin noted earlier, the collaborating architect will be unavailable till next week. Not surprisingly, the comments are running heavily in favor of conspiracy from an overwhelming majority of readers who arrived here via links from Scott Johnson of PowerLine and Michelle, both of whom view the "Crescent of Embrace," with its Islamicist connotations, as an inappropriate symbol -- whether intentional or not on the part of the designers -- for a memorial to the heroes of Flight 93. Like most of their fans, they favor scrapping the design and starting over.

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

Red-maple baiting catches fire

Semicircular forms -- like the amphitheatre (upper left) in this chipboard topographical model of a design project from our student days at Harvard Design School, are standard archetypal tools of the landscape architects' trade. But in today's fevered climate of seeing witches behind every tree, the use of such forms can get your plantings -- specifically red maples -- metaphorically burned at the stake.

"The simplest  explanation, it seems to me, is that the orientation of the 'Crescent of Embrace' is coincidental," writes Wretchard of The Belmont Club re a Freeper's claim that the Flight 93 Memorial design's semicircular grove of maples is oriented toward Mecca. Having checked out the portfolio of Nelson Byrd Woltz -- the landscape architectural firm that collaborated with Paul Murdoch Architects on the project -- Wretchard had noticed that semicirclular forms are a signature motif in the company's work:

That brought me right back to the Flight 93 Memorial Site. If you look at the video provided, you'll see that the orientation of the "Crescent of Embrace" is determined, or at least very strongly suggested by the contours of the ground. (The PDF map shows the same thing). The contours run right through the opening of the crescent. Unless you wanted the park visitors to climb up and down contour lines the opening was exactly where it had to be. So the simplest explanation it seems to me, is that the orientation of the "Crescent of Embrace" is coincidental.

Even so, Wretchard is able to prove, in an explanation too technical for us to follow -- 'wish he'd drawn a diagram -- that it just so happens the curved maple grove is, indeed, oriented toward Mecca.  He concludes:

Perhaps years from today no one will object to red crescents displayed in conjunction with the victims of September 11, just as someday people may remember that swastikas were widely employed as ancient religious symbols. One day, but probably not in 2005.

If only the designers hadn't used that tin-eared title, "Crescent of Embrace." As Wretchard writes:

The phrase "Crescent of Embrace" seems particularly unfortunate, when "Circle of Remembrance" would have done as well. The Islamic red crescent is typically oriented east, not southwest, like the memorial. The idea the Flight 93 memorial should be oriented towards Mecca struck me as implausible. But hey, there it is.

We emailed the landscape architects -- with a copy to the architects -- this morning soliciting comments on the controversy swirling around their project and will update here when and if they reply.  Googling Warren T. Byrd, Jr., principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz, we found not the slightest suggestion in his words or works that he would be interested in imposing Islamic symbolism -- or any extrinisic symbolism -- on the land. He's obviously heavily into what Richard Haas calls "haunting the site" and responding to the spirit of the place in developing his design "interventions":

Both his teaching [in one of the nation's top landscape architecture programs at the University of Virginia] and his practice emphasize the importance of knowing the specific qualities of the physigraphic regions within which one works. His particular expertise, beyond site planning, drawing and teaching design, is his knowledge of natural systems and plant communities, especially as they might influence design ideas for particular sites and programs.

If only those with extrinsic political agendas would stop a moment and listen to the landscape architect's intentions in his own words:

We meld the particular -- a place, a plant community, a certain landform -- with universal archetypal forms such as the mount, the theater, the grove, the parterre, and spatial concepts of prospect and refuge -- so that the local ethos of a place is never lost or homogenized.

Then stop to look at the actual design as laid out in the plans and renderings. But no.  Even the sensible Dr. Sanity -- with whom we agree about everything 99% of the time -- seems to have temporarily lost her mind:

It could be coincidence. It could be deliberate. Or it could be a monumental "Freudian Slip" -- that aptly demonstrates the unconscious motivations that drive many anti-American, "peace"-loving; appeasing; enabling; and unbelievably blind minions of the left side of the political spectrum.

Reading into things is only human, but some of the more hysterical riders of this bandwagon -- there were at least two among Wretchard's commenters talking about burning down the trees once they were installed -- are just plain crazy.

Update:  Michelle Malkin -- always interesting and informative and worth reading, even though we disagree with her big time on this one -- has more, including a "sample of letters sent to architect Paul Murdoch, who is unavailable for comment until Sept. 19, according to his office."  Did we really have the nerve to call one of the shining lights of the blogosphere shrill? Please forgive us, Michelle.

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

A grove by any other name

Architect's renderings of the unfortunately named "Crescent of Embrace" grove of red maple and sugar maple trees at the center of blogospheric controversy over the Flight 93 National Memorial project for alleged cryptic reference to the Islamic crescent.

"People ought to be able to tell the difference between a diagram and the thing diagrammed," writes White Pebble in another post coming down on the side of truth, justice and the American way in the Flight 93 memorial controversy, and Goomp comments eloquently that "everything is in the name: 'Arc of Embrace,' and the visions are of glory rather than of hate." That has a nice ring to it. As we just emailed Scott Johnson of PowerLine in response to his rhetorical question "How else explain the 'Crescent of Embrace' memorial to the heroes of United Flight 93, discussed by Michelle Malkin?":

As I see it, the crescent is in the eye of the beholder, a projection of what Michelle and others want to see in the design. I agree with Dean Esmay, who says in his most recent post "it seems to me to point to a growing trend of the right to be as shrill and perpetually indignant as the PC mavens most of us grew to hate so much in the 1990s."

Re the design itself:  A crescent like the one that is a well known symbol of Islam is tapered at both ends and swells toward the center, in imitation of the shape of a crescent moon, as the root of the word -- from the Latin crescere for grow -- suggests. By contrast, the curved shape on the Flight 93 plan is of equal width throughout -- more like the rim of a pie plate as my play on Michelle's/Zombie's animated gif illustrates. The color on the plan is a mixture of red and orange, representing the fall colors of two deciduous species -- red maple and sugar maple -- that will be planted on the site.

As a person who recognizes the power of words to win or lose hearts and minds, I fault the architects for their insistence on retaining the potentially provocative and inaccurate title "crescent of embrace" rather than the more abstract and descriptive "arc of embrace" recommended by the jury, and as a landscape architect I criticize their artistic failure to convey through their graphics -- to the average person not accustomed to interpreting topographical plans -- a sense of the place they envision.

Plenty of blame to go around? There always is.

Update: We were all wrong about the designers' failure to render a sense of the place they envision.  Check out the evocative graphics of their formal presentation (see photo above), which we just discovered via the Discovery Channel's excellent, link-rich site for "The Flight That Fought Back," which premiers tonight at 9.

Update II:  Scott Johnson sends a lovely PowerLineLanche our way:  "Crescenity in the eye of the beholder?"

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

Sometimes a grove of maples is just a grove of maples

"Guys: it's a curved grove of maple trees for God's sake. Get over it," writes Dean Esmay of Dean's World in the first sensible thing we've read -- other than our own brilliant posts here and here -- re the recent hysteria being fomented by a handful of leading lights of the right side of the blogosphere over perceived hidden messages in the plan for the Flight 93 memorial:

So, while I like and respect Michelle Malkin and many of the blogs she links to, I have to say, this entire kerfuffle over a 9/11 memorial that has a red semi-circle in it strikes me as over-the-top, and it seems to me to point to a growing trend of the right to be as shrill and perpetually indignant as the PC mavens most of us grew to hate so much in the 1990s.

Exactly. Whether of the left or or the right, conspiracy theories and evocations of evil forces lurking in the shadows -- reminiscent of medieval witchhunting -- have no place in measured political discourse. It isn't just Hillary anymore.

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

Let's roll!

Look, Ma.  Our first animated GIF!  Inspired by the one by Zombie at Michelle Malkin's, where the Flight 93 memorial's curved grove of red maples and sugar maples becomes an Islamic crescent, we created our own version, where the curve becomes the edge of an All-American apple pie. As Mom said, patting out the dough onto her floured board, Let's roll! (Detail of Flight 93 memorial site plan showing the Bowl or Crescent of Embrace in red. Pie photo from "Put the pie together.")

Where some see crescents, others see apple pie.  Michelle Malkin and other A-list bloggers we usually see eye to eye with are seeing red and whipping their readers into a primal frenzy over things they see that others don't. She's impugning the motives of Los Angeles architect Paul Murdoch, one of the designers of the Flight 93 memorial -- blogged here yesterday -- and even dissing relatives of Flight 93 victims who speak well of the project. If only the designers had followed the advice of the second-stage jury, who "recommended changing the project's name to steer clear of religious overtones. Rather than crescent, the jury suggested using circle or arc of embrace instead," reports the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Tribune-Democrat. Besides, "Arc of Embrace" sounds classical and timeless, unlike the treacly, trendy sounding  "Crescent of Embrace."

One of the jury members, a titan in our own field of landscape architecture, University of Pennsylvania Professor Laurie Olin of the Olin Partnership, was apparently unaware of the evil he was about to let loose on the world:

"This has been the calmest, most thoughtful jury I've been on," said Olin, who's served on dozens. "I think their experience has made them very reflective."

Robert Campbell, an architecture critic for The Boston Globe and jury member, said jurors' opinions were swayed simply by listening to one another, not by force of personality.

You want force of personality? Welcome to the blogosphere. We visited the National Park Service's website -- they have final say in approval of the design -- and tried to e-mail a message alerting them to the onslaught of hysterical outrage headed their way, but the site was already inoperable, presumably because the much-loved Michelle had advised her multitudinous readers to go there and speak their mind. So we rang the NPS up.  The gal at the other end of the line welcomed our call, reporting that we were the first person -- presumably among many callers -- who had registered a positive response to their plans.

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.

"Amazing cluelessness, or something more deliberate?"

Bird's-eye view of topographical model of Paul and Milena Murdoch's "Crescent of Embrace," winning design for the Flight 93 memorial, conveys little of the rationale nor the sense of place intended by the designers.  The apparent resemblance to the crescent moon that is part of the internationally recognized symbol of Islam has some elements of the blogosphere seeing red.

"Our memorial is not about offering explanation for what happened, but to allow people to come to terms with it," explained architect Paul Murdoch, whose winning design for the Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania was unveiled this week. On paper it sounds like just what the doctor ordered, an antidote to what offends so many of us about what Michelle Malkin accurately dubbed "A Blame America Monument" proposed for Ground Zero. Says the designer:

The idea of the Crescent of Embrace, Murdoch said, is to be a gesture of healing and bonding. The crescent marks the edge of the land, which will remain largely untouched.

The Murdochs wanted to ensure the tranquility and serenity of the landscape. They also noted, though, the rawness of the site. There is constant wind, and in the winter, blinding snows are common.

In other words, Islamic symbols never entered the designers' mind. They were looking for the spirit of the place and took their cue from the lay of the land. But some on the right side of the blogosphere -- as one of Charles Johnson's more measured commenters says -- cannot see the forest for the trees. "Is this a coincidence, an example of amazing cluelessness, or something more deliberate?" asks Charles portentously, and the Lizardoids [his fans] are off and running -- 723 comments and counting -- to riotous effect:

"A spokesman for the new design said that the panel wanted to avoid all controvery or symbols of Islamism in the new design, and so chose a happy, uplifting central feature, the folded table cloth from a family-style Italian bistro," writes Lizardoid and blogger Ace of Ace of Spades re a "replacement memorial" for Flight 93.

And yet it's not a problem. As we ourselves said in Charles's comments (#692):

As a landscape architect, I'd say it's a matter of a failure on the part of the designers to convey the experience of the place through their model and drawings. It's what we used to call in grad school "bird's-eye design." What looks like a Muslim symbol in the model is, on the ground, a vibrant grove of red maples and sugar maples that will be green in summer, red and orange in fall and snowbound with bare branches in winter. It has great "capabilities," but none of that comes across in the design documents.

Michelle Malkin asks "What do you think?" We think the whole thing is grist for the creative mills of bloggers and their loyal readers, and no blogger's readers are more loyal -- not to mention legion -- that the Lizardoids of Little Green Footballs. A provocative question like Charles's "Amazing cluelessness or something more deliberate?" exercises our thinking and writing skills and every so often brings forth a keeper like Ace's "replacement memorial" above. The blogosphere rules!

Technorati tags:  crescent of embrace,  flight 93 memorial.