I’ve continued to bounce this idea off friends. More and more I thought about a permanent memorial in D.C. – something like the Vietnam Wall where the display would also have blank space to add more species names. It would hopefully force visitors to think about which will be next. Obviously the wall idea is already done so if I was the artist I might still do an actual graveyard with granite tombstones as permanent memorial, with some blank ones and perhaps roped-off empty graves.

I realized the best person I might ask for advice is the creator of the Vietnam Wall, Maya Lin. I studied Chinese Poetry with her mother and met her brother once too. I just learned that she currently has an exhibit that sounds very relevant. This is the description from her web site:

Ms. Lin is currently working on what will be her last memorial, entitled What is Missing? which will focus on bringing awareness to the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss. Once again reinventing what a monument can be, What is Missing? will be a multi-sited work existing in select scientific institutions, online as a website, and as a book. It will debut at the California Academy of Sciences in September 2009 with a sound and media installation located at the Academy’s East Terrace.

I may just make a trip to visit it for inspiration, even if I feel like maybe there’s not the same need for what I was planning (not abandoning it just yet either). There is definitely an event already planned that can be submitted to BYSE 2010 event calendar. I’m going to see if I can find Maya’s address or maybe her mother’s to get the submittal request to her since she’d really be the best person to submit it. The event is mentioned here:

Next April, to coincide with Earth Day, a short video homage to endangered habitats sponsored by the public art organization Creative Time will appear on MTV’s electronic billboard in Times Square, and the ‘‘What Is Missing?’’ Web site will go live. ‘‘We are creating media objects that can jump from form to form,’’ Lin says. ‘‘You listen inside the cone, tap in online or download content to your iPod or your computer. It’s a monument that can go wherever it wants to go and information that is pretty much free.’’ (A second element of the project, a traveling installation with an audio-visual cabinet of wonders, is at the Beijing Center for the Arts and at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, N.Y.)

Her mom actually had our class over for dinner one night when I was in school. It was a traditional Chinese meal unlike any I’ve had before or since. She showed off some of the scale models of her daughter’s work and I’ve been a fan since.

There I go again…

And also I’m sorry if I meant to imply anything further by way of help needed – I’m really happy to just have a seed planted and get a little feedback to run with. What you do here is important and needed.

There’s a bit of weird and probably meaningless synchronicity that I still can’t ignore. Carl Zimmer blogged about ExtInked tattoos of endangered species on Thursday. That night I found myself in line after his talk waiting to have my book signed when suddenly I heard “Hi I’m Jen Frazer and I have a blog called the Artful Amoeba”.

So it was funny to unexpectedly witness two of my favorite science writers meeting. I’d been blogging hours before about the extinct species graveyard created by my friend Vince (who did my first tattoo, a spider).

I’m probably just a primate that is exceptionally good at recognizing patterns and finding meaning in them when there is none. It was still completely bizarre. If I had an omniscient computer I’d want the odds.

Though I certainly understand what you’re saying, I’m not sure benthic invertebrates would have an more highly developed moral compasses than we do (and certainly not spines! ; ) ). Nature can be a pretty cruel place, all things considered. Wild animals lead tough lives usually followed by unpleasant deaths. In addition to all the garden-variety nastiness, pretty much any successful species will try to take over the world, weed-style. It’s just that H. sapiens has evolved consciousness, compassion, and ethics and, in my opinion, we should know better.

By the way, I don’t want to come across as NASA-bashing either. I love planetary science and even took a class on it in grad school. I just question why we spend so much on that and NOT on ocean exploration and biodiversity protection. There are many other places from which funds for such endeavors could come. I can think of a big five-sided one in particular.

I really feel this is at least one good thing for the U.S. to do in the Year of Biodiversity, and am pretty excited to have found an old friend while considering it. Whether it is a traveling exhibit or collaboration that leads to a group funeral, I think it is needed. Our country has much to atone for (*cough* passenger pigeon *cough*). I don’t want or need a congressional declaration, nor reparations to any surviving related pigeons. I think a real memorial service would mean more anyway.

In the end maybe we need a permanent memorial to all the species we’ve wiped out, like they have in Ohio. But I’ll work on that after figuring out how to pull off this funeral idea.

Also, The Onion recently published an editorial on money wasted by NASA. I think the proper environmentalist response is to encourage space programs for species with endangered habitats, so they can seek out new worlds. Some days I look around at my fellow humans and realize there’s probably some benthic invertebrates with more highly developed moral compasses, if not spines. I might even get on one of their spaceships if given a chance.

We ought to organize something and submit it to get the U.S. onto that schedule of events. I keep thinking back to something we did in college. A friend created a series of tombstones* for the extinct and extirpated species of Ohio. It was the perfect kind of display to put on college campus. Some people came just to learn more, some to mourn, and others to help find their motivation for continuing the fight. Ideally this could be a traveling cemetery (like the traveling Vietnam wall replica) and each new school that takes care of it would add tombstones for local species before passing it on.

A lot of activism comes out of mourning and anger, but too often I think that the activists forget to take time to cry and rage. At the end of the day, I think those are the only human responses to the insanity.

I’ve got a blog to write in greater response. It’s tempting to keep going here, but I’ll stop and come back with a link.

* They were made almost exclusively of wood that was rescued from dumpsters. Stone would have been too expensive and heavy, and anything that required buying materials seemed offensive and contrary to the whole purpose.