Having been raised in an era...

[Uncle Bill]

...of being misanthropic towards anything involving Russia, or especially the USSR, you might understand my reluctance to embrace this gift with open arms, and it makes me wonder why it hasn't been promoted on a national level by the MSP.

It's just so difficult to take anything Russia does without believing there is an ulterior motive.

But it is what it is, and taken at face value, should be viewed with thanks and respect...not necessarily for the artist or the country that produced it, but for the memory of those innocent souls that died that day.

UB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QOuKAcBEFY

[YardleyLabs]

...of being misanthropic towards anything involving Russia, or especially the USSR, you might understand my reluctance to embrace this gift with open arms, and it makes me wonder why it hasn't been promoted on a national level by the MSP.

It's just so difficult to take anything Russia does without believing there is an ulterior motive.

But it is what it is, and taken at face value, should be viewed with thanks and respect...not necessarily for the artist or the country that produced it, but for the memory of those innocent souls that died that day.

UB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QOuKAcBEFY

I haven't been to it but it definitely received some press attention when it went up in 2006 as well as when the gift was first announced (e.g., http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206168,00.html , and http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/0..._talk_finnegan.). Unfortunately, much of the attention seems to have focused on questions concerning who paid for it (I understand the artist paid $12 million personally), controversy about the accuracy of the names of the dead inscribed on the monument which, if you remember, was a moving target for years, controversy concerning the location of the monument, etc., etc. I suspect that if France tried to give us the Statue of Liberty today, it would end up embroiled in so much controversy that it would finally end up in a trailer park somewhere in Arizona and the inscription would be something like "America for the Americans who got here before you!". It looks very nice. Thank you for posting the link.