2 Columbus Circle and the Right Stuff

Thirty years ago, I attended a lecture or presentation by Tom Wolfe and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy at the Student Union at the State University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, NY on the Main campus, before half of it was moved to the suburban campus in nearby Amherst, NY. They both talked about "urban riots in America" and the topic of the riots of the 1960's (about which a Federal commission also convened) was well covered by both, though not well attended, an interesting lecture from prominent participant observers in American culture. Since, unfortunately, there have been more, and the scars of the earlier ones, now forty years ago, apparently have not wholly healed, though there may be very different "reasons" for them. I want to just say that, if we cannot show our highest ideals, hopes and aspirations for the processes involved in preservation, how can others not draw a wider conclusion about the whole "system" of our government. The vigilance we should have in the interest of our past should exhibit a concern for "due process" that would be extended to us citizens also. The inability to deal with the "objects" of our culture can be seen as the inability to create equality and fairness in our democratic participation. A few years before I left to attend school in Buffalo, NY my classmates were beginning their education, with state Regents scholarships and fencing scholarships, at NYU, an athletic endeavor we finally have had some success in, the women winning in the Olympics, where earlier fencer Peter Westbrook, won a Bronze medal. I was in the "Tweed Courthouse" a number of years ago, when it was slated to become a museum of the City of New York, that stopped and now the Dept of Education headquarters, after an extensive restoration, which I had some roles in as an archaeological technician. US Pan-Pacific athletes were then being celebrated in a photo exhibit in which he was shown. He has a school for "ghetto" kids in fencing he maintains, and produces competitors. All fencing is regulated by rules, and people win fairly. We should have the same intensity for the rules and procedures in our business dealings with parts of our city's culture held important by its citizens. Sincerely, George J. Myers, Jr. BA Anthropology Stony Brook University Home of the W. Averell Harriman College for Urban Studies. Named for the United States financier who negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union banning tests of nuclear weapons (1891-1986).