Plowshares into swords into stirrups into scissors into rifles into scalpels into bells

[avram]

Steel salvaged from the World Trade Center wreckage will (if it’s up to spec) be used in the bow of the USS New York, a new San Antonio-class amphibious assault ship currently being built in Mississippi. I read about this a couple days ago, I think, but forgot about it till I read this commentary by Jeanne D’Arc echoing this one by Elayne Riggs:

What makes the wreckage more than ordinary scrap metal is the fact that it's mixed in with the remains of actual people, much of it powderized by the intense heat to the point where it's probably inseparable. Now, it's one thing for Mark Gruenwald's ashes to be mixed into a special edition of Squadron Supreme, that was a request made in his will. But I can pretty much surmise that few if any of these 3000 people would consent to having their ashes be used as part of an instrument of war. That's what I find, in August's words, utterly obscene.

And that’s what I have a hard time swallowing. Did the WTC dead consent to having their ashes dumped in Fresh Kills landfill to begin with? Or sold as scrap? Surely not. Why balk at a warship, then? And if we can’t do anything with the steel that the dead didn’t consent to, then what do we do with it? And why limit this attitude just to this steel, and not to everything else the ashes bonded to?

Look, I was there in Brooklyn on 9/11. I saw that plume of smoke arcing up over me, and eastward. I breathed that air, and smelled that smoke, as did millions of other people. Those ashes travelled far and wide. They got everywhere, and into everything. They’re part of me now, and part of lots of other people too. The WTC dead were part of every rape, every kiss, every fight, every sneeze, every lie, every truth, every fart, every laugh in the New York area in the past fifteen months, no matter what the dead would have wanted. (And what they’d most want, I’m guessing, is not to be dead.) And every one of us has atoms in his or her body that spent some time as part of Genghis Kahn, or Charlemagne, or Aristotle, or Washington.

The other day Chris and I were talking about the current plans for rebuilding the WTC, all of which seem to involve leaving the actual footprints of the original buildings undeveloped, as if to build there would be disrespectful to the dead. Chris pointed out that there probably isn’t so much as a single square foot of land on all of Manhattan Island that hasn’t had somebody die on it at some point. And yet life goes on, and we keep on building.

I’m all for respecting the dead, but not to the point where the graveyard walls become a prison for the living.

Comments

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. This is one of those areas where the anti-war zeal of many (an anti-war zeal I increasingly share in this case) is leading to leaps of outrage untempered by rationality. Also to leaps of projection: it's a failure of imagination to declare that "few if any" of the dead would consent to their ashes being used for an instrument of war. I wouldn't care to guess what percentage, but I have no doubt at that a great many of the dead would not only have consented but would have found it fitting; I'm afraid that the WTC dead certainly included a representative sample of people whose views on politics and war differed markedly from Elayne Riggs's.

[cadhla.livejournal.com]

I agree with you completely. This was beautifully reasoned and put; thank you.

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

"I’m all for respecting the dead, but not to the point where the graveyard walls become a prison for the living."
Very eloquently put.
Matt

well, yes, but

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

the idea (which seemed fairly inescapable to me) that this was probably the carrot/stick that kept Lott from resigning made me a little wretched.

Hrm. The dead. I always wonder when I hear pundits and politicians talk about the dead - they saw pictures or (what impressed them most, I think) destroyed buildings - we breathed them in for weeks.

I'm actually for cremation for myself, but this thing has a creepy feeling, like repurposing a camp.

I know that's not rational.

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Beautifully written Av, and I'm with you 100%. You have my vote. :) Did you respond on those lists with this perspective?

[avram]

Nah, my usual habit is to just put the stuff out. Used to work pretty well on my weblog in the old days, but now with more people having comment sections in their blogs I don't know if they check their referrer logs as often.

[redbird]

I think the difference is that if it were used as random scrap steel, it would just be like any other molecules. But the decision to make it into a warship named after us is a symbolic act, so it's reasonable to discuss and object to the intended symbolism.

Also, I agree with you about rebuilding on the "footprints" (silly word, buildings don't have feet). Shall we invite the objectors to discuss this in Washington Square Park?

Chris has a link

[(Anonymous)]

Here's (http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-nybres273062676dec27.story) Jimmy Breslin's take on the submarine thing.

USS New York

[(Anonymous)]

After the attacks, I told my wife that if I was ever killed by a terrorist, she should know that I would certianly *not* object to my name being scrawled on a bomb to be dropped ("John says Hi!" or the like). If fact, I'd want my friends to see a picture of it and have a beer for me.

On 9/11 I rode my bike down to the Battery to get my wife at her office. Until I looked at a photograph months later, I didn't realize that as late as December 2001 parts of that bike were still coated with grey ash since I had never bothered to clean it. Was it disrespectful to ride to work every day with that ash still clinging to my bike? Was it disrespectful to wipe it off with a paper towel and throw it in the garbage? I don't know. But I do know that putting WTC steel into a Navy ship is fitting and proper.

john.henderson@nyu.edu

[(Anonymous)]

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth (set in the distant future, as the sun is fading) mentions at some point a cult who wear stilts to avoid walking directly on the earth, because of the vast number of people who have died on any given spot.