Zoning officials have signed off on George W. Bush’s Presidential Library plunking parking lots right up against its northern neighbors, on a side of the Bush complex not shown in the lovely drawings the Library released.
The neighbors had complained, and University Park officials made noises about forcing changes in the plans. But at a meeting with no public participation they appear to have caved entirely to SMU’s threat of slapping dorms on the property.
The lots would be to Mrs. Bush’s right in this photo, the other side of the trees.
Fancy color sketches and models of the George W. Bush Presidential Library have been loosed upon an anxious world, and must be mined for clues.
Like, where will they bury him?
Assuming Bush follows the pharaoh-ic path of FDR, Truman, Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and his father’s plan at College Station, he’ll have to be buried on site. If the “Texas Rose Garden” above is a little too outdoorsy, there is the Freedom Tractor Beam inside.
The careful viewer will note a presidential quote on the wall behind the generic assembled white folks.
It’s a line from Bush’s 2004 Republican Convention acceptance speech, in which he claimed we are summoned by a “calling from beyond the stars.“ Here on Earth Bush had begun the year attempting a call to greatness with a vague drumbeat for Mars exploration, then buried the exciting initiative by the time of his State of The Union address.
The convention speech itself was delivered with a spaceport motif.
The Library grounds are touted as a Bush gift to the nation, or at least SMU, providing “numerous spaces for events and gatherings,” but don’t plan your protest rally just yet.
The Ronald Reagan Library’s swanky new “Air Force One Discovery Center” recreating Reagan’s Island hopping holiday in Grenada has received the super glamorous THEA Award for Learning Experience from industry titans of the Themed Entertainment Association.
The Reagan Discovery Center takes school children and plunks them down in an Oval Office recreation [steps away from yet another replica Oval Office], Air Force One [right next to an actual plane] , and the command post of the USS Ronald Reagan, which did not exist at the time of the invasion.
Entirely disappeared from the exhibit is the unprecedented military censorship of the invasion, which allowed the Reagan Administration freedom to tell the story first their way. Also missing are the plucky American medical students, whose mythical danger of becoming “hostages” was the lead public explanation for the invasion. Enjoy the show!
The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning arts critic Mark Feeney has solved the Presidential Library/Pharaoh-ization problem: Make Obama go first!
It’s a position our first African-American President has been in many times before, and why not round out Black History Month by renouncing the building of his all but inevitable Presidential Library?
I agree with almost everything Feeney says about these places – the terrible history, bad architecture, and overall waste of these monuments to would-be greatness.
But why start with the new guy? George W. Bush has yet to announce a design, much less break ground – that one could be strangled in its birth. The Carter Library will be is closed most of this year in order to sink another $10 million into the place. And despite Feeney’s claim that the Nixon Library finally got his papers in 2007, they are still building, and the papers are not expected on site until Fall 2009.
The established Presidential Libraries are rotting from within, and could be left to wither. But why does Barack Obama have to be first?
The lots would be to Mrs. Bush’s right in this photo, the other side of the trees.
The Library grounds are touted as a Bush gift to the nation, or at least SMU, providing “
The TEA-ists love how it draws in the youngsters.
