Word: monumentality
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...some, the O'Shaughnessy Dam is a monument to the skills of the Irish-American engineer who built it. Elegant is the word that Susan Leal, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, uses to describe the curved wedge of rock and concrete that soars 300 ft. above the floor of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. But to others, the dam, constructed nearly a century ago inside the western boundary of Yosemite National Park, is a mocking tombstone to a landscape whose haunting beauty has lain for too long beneath 100 billion gallons of water...
...history's crossroads for more than 2,000 years, India is the birthplace of three major religions?Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism?while Christianity and Islam arrived with empires that ruled the country for centuries. All left their monumental marks, from temples to palaces. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, a private NGO based in New Delhi, counts 70,000 historic monuments across the country, and R.P. Pereira in the New Delhi office of UNESCO?whose World Heritage Committee meets this week in Durban, South Africa, to review global conservation efforts?calls India "the world's biggest heritage...
...India's biggest problem, says Thakur, is that it lacks the manpower and financial resources to manage its historic riches. The ASI employs no qualified architects or conservationists, and monument care is split between a confusing cluster of local and national authorities, NGOs, religious orders, businesses and individuals. The Taj and its immediate environs come under six government agencies: the ministries of culture, environment and tourism, two city authorities and one state body. Thakur is careful not to condemn the ASI or the ministries, describing their staff as sincere professionals faced with an almost impossible task. But she also complains...
...Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's right-hand man Montek Singh Ahluwalia acknowledged last November that the government "has been contributing less than required" to preserve India's heritage. Last month the Ministry of Culture announced plans for a National Heritage Sites Commission with judicial powers to take charge of monument preservation. And Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury has vowed to clean up India's 26 World Heritage Sites and exploit their business potential so that they pay for themselves. Tourism Joint Secretary Amitabh Kant is perhaps the only person in India more outspoken than Thakur about heritage. "Encroachments have been terrible...
...this place, though, right behind the palm trees—constantly growing and changing, even in my absence—there sits a mirrored monument of a reminder...