I Stayed Too Long At The Fair

A little over a century ago, 200,000 people streamed into Forest Park one spring morning to celebrate the opening of the 1904 World’s Fair. Over the course of seven months, an estimated 19 million people visited this city to see the modern marvels of the day, to celebrate our mastery of the vast, unknown West.

As I biked around the park yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder why the extraordinary monuments that graced The Louisiana Purchase Exposition were not built to last. They were gigantic, modern, spectacular and impressive – and ultimately – disposable. When the fair closed that December, most of the buildings were easily dismantled and quickly discarded.

1,500 buildings spread out over 1,200 acres – majestic palaces and venues of international exhibitionism and fewer than a dozen remain standing today. And there I was, standing at the base of the World's Fair Pavilion, looking up towards this great monument and the puffed-grey clouds, heavy and full, filling the sky.

I looked down and only saw the names of the dead.

Rows and rows of grim gravestones lined the lawn facing the great fountain at the base of the pavilion.

Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi names -- written on sturdy sheets of tombstone-shaped paper, staked into the ground, side by side, row by row.

I’ve been here before, I thought...remembering how it felt the first time I experienced the Names Project…remembering what it was like to be surrounded by thousands of handmade quilts, pieced together to honor and remember the lives taken by AIDS.

We’ve all been here before, I thought…recalling a trip to the Holocaust museum a few weeks ago, where the diaries of the dead and the remnants of the Reich are intertwined, interwoven and inseparable.

These lives lost to war.

As disposable as the monuments to Westward Expansion.

But hopefully, not forgotten.

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