To the Editor:

Thank you for informing us about the 350,000 pound monstrosity that the Power Bar folks are now trying to pawn off onto the City of Berkeley and have installed on the Marina. Recently this statue was rejected by the San Francisco Art Commission as unsuitable and out-of-size to be put on public display in their City. This oversized piece is allegedly a memorial to the late David Brower, a dedicated environmental activist. I'm sure that in his heart of hearts he would have much preferred to be remembered by the preservation of some open land, such as the Albany "Bulb" or perhaps by the draining of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park.

Check out the environmental waste created to build this 175-ton absurdity: a solid one-hundred ton piece of quartzite was mined in Brazil and then shipped thousands of miles to California. Thousands of tons of copper ore and tin ore were mined, then smelted, refined and then cast to form the sixty ton bronze base for the massive quartzite piece. This heavy bronze base was then also shipped to California, where a sculptor then combined the two pieces to create his massive statue of a bronze Brower climbing on a quartzite earth. Ravaging the planet to supposedly honor a man who opposed ravaging the planet. It sounds like a plan-ET to me.

Well, the wealthy Power Bar folks are just trying to wash away a little of their personal greed-guilt by commissioning this over-sized piece of "environmental art." Why don't they just keep it in their own living room to impress their friends and relations? This imperial art piece would better befit the memory of Napoleon or Genghis Khan. Or perhaps it could be reshaped and recast into a tableau of "Mission Accomplished" and then donated to the City of Crawford, Texas for the soon-to-be-former-President Bush to gaze at when he visited. Or for a more local touch, it could be re-sculpted into a "Censorship Accomplished" memorial showing Mayor Tom Bates tossing bundles of the Daily Californian newspaper into a Berkeley dumpster.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

22 September 2004