The next quarterly meeting of the Memorial Project is on May 3rd. I am making up an ad to expose the phony redesign. Of course I have explained in all the ads that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, but it still needs to be documented. Here is a short draft:
Architect Paul Murdoch originally described his Crescent of Embrace design as the terrorists breaking a circle, turning it into a giant crescent:
He said he would work to satisfy critics who complained that it honors the terrorists. Its shape is a circle broken by the flight pattern of the plane, which supporters have said follows the topography of the area. (Tribune Democrat, September 14, 2005.)
The Memorial Project describes the redesigned Flight 93 memorial in the exact same terms:
The design now surrounds that area with a circle of trees which is broken in two places - the location which marks the flight path as it breaks the circular continuity of the bowl edge, and the Sacred Ground where the crash occurred. The locations of the two breaks in the circle are based on the flight path and crash site of Flight 93. (Email from Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley, November 14, 2008, responding to mass email campaign by critics of the crescent design.)
Instead of calling it a crescent, they now call it a broken circle, but it was ALWAYS a broken circle. The only change in the Bowl of Embrace redesign is that instead of the broken off part of the circle being removed entirely, a broken off chunk of the circle now floats out beyond the mouth of the crescent:
Murdoch re-colored his graphics to make it look as if significant changes were made, but the only actual difference is the “broken off” part circle seen on the left side of the redesign image (right). The circle is still broken, and the unbroken part of the circle is still the original giant crescent.
Both thematically and geometrically, the
original crescent remains completely intact and unchanged. Not only does the redesign still
refer explicitly to the terrorists’
circle-breaking crescent-creating feat, but the circle is broken in the exact
same places, creating the same crescent tips, and the same
Face into the crescent to face Mecca. A person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the giant crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly at Mecca (the "qibla" direction) as given by the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. (Green circle shows the "qibla" for Somerset, as calculated by Islam.com.)
The "qibla" direction is to the northeast because Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca by the great-circle, or shortest-distance method (also called the "straight line" direction, curving only in the over-the-horizon direction). Mecca and Somerset are both in the northern hemisphere, so the shortest-distance line takes a shortcut towards the arctic circle.
A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab and is the central feature around which every mosque is built.
All the "redesign" did is plant a broken off arc of trees behind this giant mihrab. You can plant as many trees behind a mosque as you want. It is still a mosque. The Flight 93 memorial is on track to be the world's largest mosque, by a factor of a hundred.
What did we expect? We hosted an open design competition in time of war and literally invited the entire world to enter. Can any one really be surprised that our terror war enemies accepted our invitation?
Much harder to understand is the willful blindness of person after person in position of responsibility, all of whom have been absolutely determined not to even consider the possibility of untoward intent, no matter how high the evidence piles.
The full exposé is in my Crescent of Betrayal book. Updates are being posted on my Error Theory blog. Please come to the Memorial Project meeting next Saturday morning at the Somerset County Courthouse and help us stop this abomination!
