Friday, November 15, 2013

A SCULPTOR'S DREAM




SHRINE FOR THE UNIDENTIFIED DEAD

by Edward Hujsak

Introduction   
    I suppose there are countless sculptors who dream of the one enormous, meaningful work of their lifetime, something that carries a serious message for all humanity and will last through the ages. Some actually make a career of huge sculptures, which brings to mind the arrogant, though temporary works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude in places like The Grand Canyon and Central Park. Most, however, will never come into being.
    I came late to sculpture, after a long career in rocket engineering. But there was sculpture of a kind there too, with implications far bigger than any thought of by professionals. I worked on the design of rockets that carried spacecraft to the moon, to Venus, Mars, and the outer planets. And now, thirty-six years after leaving Earth, Voyager spacecraft is finally leaving the solar system, after visiting all the outer planets, to meet a distant star thousands of years from now.    
    Nevertheless, I have that dream too. Though now in my 89th year, undertaking the large project I have in mind, as an individual, is borderline preposterous.
    Or is it?

The Idea
    They were mothers, fathers, laughing children, lovers, teachers, artists, farmers, toilers in all the trades, and nothing is known of them. Hurled into oblivion through the misfortune of being in the path of one of nature’s catastrophic events as well as trapped in horrors of man’s origin, an awareness of their frequency and extent by those on safer ground tends to a numbness..... something like the calm that follows the clamor in a chicken coop, when the fox has finally left with his captive.  In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries alone we have witnessed many calamities that cry out for compassion and understanding, but soon become history. To name a few: World War II, which resulted in 35 million deaths during and in the years after, across Europe;  the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, which killed twenty million people, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Multiple Bangladesh floodings, Bhopal, Rawanda, indigenous genocide in Brazil, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocidal massacres, the Bosnian Serb army genocide and anti-communist massacres in Indonesia, the Holocaust and carnage in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. The list is long.
    In the aftermath the victims are roughly collected by survivors and rescue teams, tossed onto ox-carts or other conveyances and dropped into excavated pits or trenches to be subsequently bulldozed over ....or left to rot where they lay. They are forgotten forever. Some are never recovered, lost at sea, victims of storm and war. They simply disappeared from the human scene.

Memorials
    There is something about sculpture that augers for the position that they should be one-of, and not diminished or diluted by repetition. The Twin Towers memorial, the Vietnam Memorial in Arlington Cemetery, the spectacular sculpture of Nelson Mandela in the middle of a field in South Africa, the Katyn Forest Massacre Memorial  that honors the Polish Officer Corp. and police officers that were captured and slaughtered by the Soviet army in Poland’s Katyn Forest early in World War II  stand as examples.

 On the other hand, there are Holocaust museums and memorials in 25 nations around the world. There are forty in the United States alone. Whether more than one is more meaningful, or whether desire for a shorter commuting distance has an influence is a subject for conjecture.
   
The Shrine Concept
    My dream is to achieve a work titled “Shrine for the Unidentified Dead.” It would be a place for people to visit, to contemplate the vulnerability of humans on planet Earth, the importance of interdependence, cooperation, compassion, and the futility of conflict and combat. It consists of a platform upon which are erected vertical elements that are evocative of Eastern and Western cultures, but with no specificity with regard to religion. The construction is of steel, or bronze. If steel, considerations are Corten, stainless, or zinc-gold plated steel, if the latter can be demonstrated to weather in the climate at the selected construction site. The spires will produce moaning sounds, varying in pitch as the wind creates and sheds Aeolian vortices off sharp corners. Visitors will have access to the platform as described later, becoming, in a sense, a part of the  ambiance.

   The height of the spires is approximately ten meters. The depth  about a third of a meter. The sculpture would be erected on site.
     The execution of the work would, through the design of the structure upon which the shrine is mounted, additionally evoke remembrance of the lost civilizations  of the Americas, mainly the Incan and Aztec empires that were doomed to extinction from Spanish invasions led by Pizzaro and Cortez as a consequence of combat and the introduction of European diseases such as  smallpox, measles and diptheria, and mass starvation that followed. It is impossible to imagine the totality of that episode in history. Yet an awareness  of it must be a continuing part of humility and contemplation in the human scene.

Siting
    The complete project has the sculpture mounted on  a supporting structure that is themed to the Aztec and Incan cultures.  The interior of the structure could be a museum. Access to the memorial would be at the rear, where the Earth would be raised to within two meters of the platform and a wheelchair type of ramp would lead to the platform. Likewise, entry to the structure would be in the rear, with a spiral ramp inside leading to the floor of the museum. It would be sited  in an accessible, but unpopulated area, in a climate zone that allows year-around visitation.  A location such as a bluff in the Julian area of San Diego County, in California, overlooking the Anza-Borrego Desert and mountains to the East would, for example, be acceptable.


Execution
     Far too large a project for an individual to undertake, there is a way to do it in a painless way, including raising the several millions that it could cost. It could be undertaken by a major university as a joint project of the arts, architectural and engineering departments. The benefit to the university would be global recognition and prestige, but more importantly, it would become the center of knowledge for this subject, in particular the lost civilizations of the Americas. The project should be particular attractive to a city that has visitors year around from all over the globe. It would be in the city’s interest to assume responsibility for maintenance and administrative presence far into the future as a valuable and enduring part of its arts heritage.  
 
Funding
As to raising the money for the project, the project could take advantage of a recent development, a benefit of the computer age, that makes it easy to raise large sums of money. It is called crowd-funding. For this project, the principals would write what would amount to a proposal to its alumni, requesting each to contribute the price of a few cups of coffee. It is possible that among the alumni, one would even have an acceptable site for the project that they would want to contribute.

Note: There are illustrations that accompany this article but were not accepted for posting. Contact me at hujsaked@aol.com if interested.

                                                          

Thursday, November 14, 2013

MAGIC PILL

                         KEEP YOUR LIFESTYLE BUT TAKE THIS PILL

    The extent to which the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industries are conjoined at the hip can hardly be better illustrated than by their recent recommendation that Lipitor should be in general use across the population to lower cholesterol levels.
    

  Why would anyone, after reading the various side effects of Lipitor, which are amply defined on the internet, fall for this line? The list is long and includes such things as muscle pain and weakness, dizziness, insomnia, chest pains, peripheral edema, urinary tract infection, back pain, arthritis and memory loss. Also attention must be paid to possible interactions with other drugs. And oh yes, if you are pregnant or breast feeding, definitely do not take this drug.
    

   Lipitor has been  around for a little over twenty years. What of the long term effects of taking this drug? There is understandably no information on this aspect of its use.
    

   Another concern is that the drug is available as a generic, manufactured in places like laboratories in India. There has been at least one recall of generics that were produced in foreign laboratories.
    

   Of course, the medical profession would be serving the public better by informing them on what foods to consume, in what quantities, what foods to avoid,  and recommended proportions of food types, leaning on nature to hold cholesterol at acceptable levels.
    

   But no. Live it up, citizens. Our magic pill will keep you out of trouble.