From NPR: The 9/11 Memorial, a non-profit organization, does not receive federal, state or city funding, and 60 to 70 percent of its budget comes from tickets, online sales and the gift shop.
Can you come up with any examples of specific locations where this has occurred the way you describe it?
Were any of them recent grave sites?
Yes, this is another major part of what is tasteless about the 9/11 memorial. It’s not publicly owned.
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And they’ve got a nice, big “donate” button on their website, too.
I wonder about the market for souvenirs there. If I’m vacationing and buy a souvenir at an attraction, it’s usually because I want something to remind me of my visit occasionally when I’m at home and/or be a conversation piece so that I can talk about my trip with others. Like I still love to drink out of the Galveston Beach souvenir glass that I bought on my honeymoon a decade and a half ago. It makes me happy to remember the sun and the sea breeze and the fun of being young newlyweds. Who wants to bring up the feelings and memories about 9/11 at random? Who wants that for an ice breaker when their friend is over to watch the game? While I’m sure that the visit to the museum is a moving experience and a connection with a historical event, so I can see why people might visit (Not my cup of tea, I want my really small amount of time off to travel to be spent on things that are almost entirely frivolous and fun and as untainted by anything negative or unpleasant or uncomfortable as possible. But I get the interest other people might have.), I don’t understand what would motivate anyone to buy a souvenir of that sort of place. I can see dropping some cash in the donation box on your way out to support it financially, but to want to take a reminder trinket home with you seems weird.
Bummer. And I was thinking how nice it would be to own a piece of WTC7 embedded in a lucite keychain.
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I do think it matters how long it’s been. My city is an Old West town, one of our best known historical figures being “Hanging Judge” Issac C. Parker. So our souvenirs, even the intentionally humorous ones, related to criminals being hung in the Wild West cowboy era, while it could be be interpreted as kind of dark and morbid and tasteless, aren’t generally seen that way by anyone who’s not just searching for something to be outraged about. Nobody’s still alive who had a family member or even an acquaintance hung by Parker. No one has died on our historic gallows for generations. Even with the Parker era being only a 120 or so years ago, it’s far enough removed from today that no one is still genuinely grieving for anyone who was associated with that era. It’s become truly historic now. It’s fine to make light of it now. Salem’s witch trials were over 300 years ago. There’s no one alive who could have even known anyone who knew anyone who’d been involved with the trials. There’s plenty of understanding of the grave lesson that is to be learned from the trials. But there’s no undoing that they happened and no escaping that they’re a part of that area’s history. So there’s no harm in embracing it and being okay with lightening up about it. A historical version of “gallows humor” if you will. 9/11 is still too recent for it to be that way. There are families still actively mourning their loss from that one. Commercializing the tragedy at all is off-putting and if there is a need for or demand for commercialization it should at least be done with extreme care to be respectful of the community that is still healing.
‘‘We push your buttons, now push ours!’’
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Agree!
Question: How long was it before the gift shop opened at Pearl Harbor? How about the one at the Vietnam Wall?
I don’t know on that, but I’m going to go with totally not long enough. If there is one currently, it’s still too soon.
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Hmm - well - Auschwitz has a book store. http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=741&Itemid=83
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The terrorists have won…
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