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=> Installing The Shumirum Monument

Installing The Shumirum Monument
Posted by beezelbub (Guest) - Sunday, July 24 2005, 16:41:38 (CEST)
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...I started it in 1988...that's 17 years ago. For the last four years the statues of the queen and her seven foot long lioness have been kept in a parking lot, behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The monument was accepted with no fuss and a good deal of anticipation by the city of Chicago and given a most prestigious site...a block and a half from the Oriental Institute on the campus of the University of Chicago...a site you couldn't buy for any price...but is given free to those who deserve it.

That was over nine years ago. The following three years were wasted because John Nimrod didn't approve the location...said there were too many Blacks there and students playing frisbee and having picnics. As a courtesy the Arts Committee said he could propose alternate sites for consideration and he went away happy and never called them again for three years. Finally, tired of waiting for him and wanting to hold the unveiling in time for our Chicago convention, the city decided to go ahead with the installation as originally planned.

Michael Lash, the director, told me the city would provide the pedestal for the moument at their expense as well as cover installation costs...they would provide advertising on city buses and radio programs...as well as see to all the details, such as public toilets, seating and sound systems. When Nimrod found out he fired off a letter to Michael saying he would be forced to sue the city to stop it. Bewildered, Lash sent me a letter saying they were very sorry but their lawyers had told them not to proceed...Michael said Chicago still considered the monument to be their's...formally given to them by the Assyrian people world-wide...and would await further developments. That was five years ago and nothing has developed since then.

Except I'm tired of seeing the monument gathering dirt and so we've been looking for an alternate site. A few years back Narsai suggested Turlock or Modesto as a location but we decided that Nimrod would send letters threatening to sue them as well...he wants the monument for his AUA, to be installed at an as yet undesignated new headquarters they've been "building" for 30 years. His two nephews, Helen's sons, are among the wealthiest men in the MidWest and having used their law firm once to defend himself in a lawsuit I brought against him and won...they wouldn't hesitate to threaten legal action and the threat would be enough...people can't figure out what is wrong with us...where this "senator" ever got the idea he could do as he pleased with OUR monument and we LET him.

Not only Nimrod but sure as shit grows in Assria, there would be letters from "Assyrians" claiming the Shumirum was "wrong"...that I had put a Viking dress on her and Sumerian jewelry etc. When we were installing the Ashurbanipal, people were outraged that I put him in a "mini-skirt" and one fellow promised to come from Canada and dynamite the scultpture if San Francisco installed it.

If we tried to install it in Turlock we'd be opening ourselves up to all sorts of additional grief and humiliation...I realize "Assyrians" are wedded to their "martyr" status but I have no desire to gouge my own eyes out so I can get sympathy for "all I have suffered".

I'm not so stupid as to say where the monument is going, except to say it is in a much smaller city, but at a most lovely location...a city most surprised they were to receive such a gift from a community they'd never heard of for the most part. But maybe that's the best part of all.

It was never my desire to make monuments "for Assyrians". We are, for the most part, modern-day savages where the Arts and culture are concerned with those who are most sophisticated among us having run, screaming in the night, long ago...leaving behind the sort of people who look at public monuments to see bird shit, focusing on what they understand best. The point, from the beginning, was to tell our story to outsiders...to gain some recognition among our neighbors and, in a back door way, bring pride to our young people by showing them that other's were proud we are among them. The poet is never honored in her own city until those living elsewhere do the honors first.

Regardless of what you think about Turlock, if you ever do, it would be a consolation prize...not even a second choice but something born of resignation...a partial victory which smacks more of defeat...defeat at Nimrod's hands...and for what? I still maintain that the Shumirum Monument has done more than just BE a monument...it's also been a device for the unmasking of the kind of "pride" we claim to have, our myopic vision, our lack of understanding for how we injure and damage ourselves most when we are being most "hot-blooded" and stupid-minded, especially where those who appoint and then annoint themselves our leaders are concerned. It has revealed that we are not a strong people, that we aren't a nation at all, let alone a community...that we are fractured, divided against one another, jealous, back-biting etc...all of them bad things to be but worse not to recognize.

None of the people who've tampered with the Shumirum had any interest in serving anyone but themselves. As to the argument that the young Assyrians of Turlock deserve the monument...I say the young people of Turlock deserve their parents more. The most fitting thing about the Shumirum's final destiny is that it will NOT go to a city with "Assyrians" in it. Let the gaping hole where it should have gone, on the campus of the University of Chicago, be the fitting memorial to "Assyrian" pride.

Turlock is not the second best choice for it was never a choice to begin with...It would have been impossible to raise the funds in Turlock alone and I doubt I would have received the kind of donations I did if I'd told donors the monument was going there to begin with. It was the possibility of installing it in Chicago, a city justifiably proud of its magnificent collection of public statuary, that moved people...certainly that's where Helen was...and she personally gve half the money.

The city now chosen and their grateful acceptance of an Assyrian Monument which, on the surface of it, has no connection whatsoever with the Assyrians, may be the real second best tribute...for it shows an appreciation of the monument as Art primarily...not propaganda...and that ain't bad. Turlock is likely to welcome ANYTHING "Assyrian"...the more god-awful the more readily...whereas Chicago, and this small town as well, aren't interested primarily because it IS Assyrian...which means we've transcended jingoism...and that can only be healthy in the long run.

Our boys would like to think that cities accept monuments because they are free gifts...but that's not so. People and groups try all the time to gain some advantage by giving "art" to cities...doesn't work.

After the installation it's going to be interesting to see what Nimrod does...



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