Polish butcher's store in communist times (approx.1985)
Posted on 08/23/2005 9:24:44 AM PDT by lizol
A tear for WTC victims falls from distant Russia Memorial lands, in sections, at new Bayonne Harbor home Tuesday, August 23, 2005
BY RONALD LEIR JERSEY JOURNAL
Loaded on five flatbed trailers and led by a police escort, giant sections of the Teardrop memorial to those killed in the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001 were transported yesterday to the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor.
There, the 100-foot-high, 170-ton monument will be assembled for a dedication planned for September 2006.
Next month, Bayonne will hold a ceremony, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 16, to unveil a commemorative stone engraving near where the monument will rise, declaring that the memorial is a gift from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people.
The bronze sections of the monument -- which its designer, Zurab Tsereteli, has called "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism" -- reached the Global Terminal pier on the Jersey City-Bayonne border Saturday after a three-week voyage from St. Petersburg, Russia.
Fred Worstell, president of Dresdner Robin, the Jersey City engineering firm hired to assemble the monument, said a special crane had to be brought to the Global pier to offload the several sections, which weighed from 28 to 63 tons each.
Before the pieces could be released from the pier, they had to be checked for any traces of radiation. Once cleared, the sections were lifted onto truck trailers for the final leg of the journey to the Peninsula.
Still to be done is the engraving of the names of more than 3,000 people killed in the two attacks around the granite base of the monument, Tsereteli said.
The monument will stand as the centerpiece of a waterfront vista park planned for a corner of the Peninsula.
Great story by the way.
Polish butcher's store in communist times (approx.1985)
That picture really makes you think. It's sobering and there's nothing funny about it (you probably didn't mean that literally). I always marvelled at the patience of repressed peoples while anger and resentment must have simmered beneath the surface.
Americans wouldn't tolerate such a thing. I don't know what they would do if they were shot down in the streets by machine guns for rioting. And the young, strong, and ammoral would run down those old ladies in that store and taken all of what was left . . .
Most of the communist countries didn’t allowed their citizens to visit western countries. Average citizen could visit only other countries of the “communist bloc”. Beside American authorities would never give them a visa. Well even now US bureaucrats are main problem-makers. I think that we don’t need any visas to other non-third world countries and in the EU we don’t need even passports.
That picture really makes you think. It's sobering and there's nothing funny about it (you probably didn't mean that literally).
Believe me that from some perspective of time, I may consider this picture as a “funny”. Of course at that time it was not funny but frustrating.
Americans wouldn't tolerate such a thing.
In similar circumstances as the Poles, Americans would not have any choice.
I don't want to get into Wal Mart again, but I wanted to clarify that when I posted those pictures, I didn't necessarily blame Wal Mart for those businesses closing. There must be more economic shift involved than just Wal Mart.
Where I live, we are bound to the south by a river, and there is massive expansion to the north, and businesses and home and condo building are moving northward accordingly, including Wal Mart.
The reason I posted the pictures is that I am saddened that I did so much business there and still can't see any good reason for it because it is still in a rather busy affluent area, a little island in the midst of other building up and a completely rebuilt mall with all new tenants just across the street.
I try to remain as objective about things as I can. Sometimes families own businesses and just decide it's time to get out because they are getting older and things have gotten too troublesome to keep running them with the public the way they have become, targets for robbery, all sorts of reasons. I think the store closed because of competition not just from Wal Mart and the family who owned it got tired and wanted to get out while they were ahead. I don't know why the gas station closed, and I don't know why my favorite cafeteria wasn't rebuilt nearby as there is still one of the same chain (started locally) in a shopping mall across the river (which draws more trouble than the area of the pictures I posted).
As of this writing, the two large stores are still empty along with the huge parking lot, but something has gone in the gas station building, and Walgreens has replaced where the cafeteria was.
The world's full of enough irony to make you rethink your prejudices. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French.
I know that is true, and I wonder why both sides relaxed things a little at the time about which I wrote. It was in 1989.
In similar circumstances as the Poles, Americans would not have any choice.
But many Americans are armed, would not turn in their guns, and would shoot back, at least initially. In the end, they would probably lose because the government has overwhelming force. I don't think all Americans would submit like docile sheep in similar circumstances, but I could be wrong, and there is the hard-core criminal element who could cause havoc in lots of ways. I think they would try to steal what they wanted until they were shot. We don't have enough jails or manpower to contain them all right now. That's why so many are loose on the streets.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.