Either I never noticed it before or it's new—and I'm pretty sure it's new—but the Southern Poverty Law Center now has a Flash-based web presentation of Maya Lin's Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. Once it loads, click once to begin and then you can go around the table's edge to mark the names and dates. There are only two dimensions here and no water, but it's worth the time. [You can also see it here.]

Maybe it was there before and I couldn't find it, but I spent a decent amount of time on the tolerance.org site just after the holidays. On the way to see my parents, S and I stopped there (it's becoming an annual visit) and went inside the Memorial Center. What most impressed me is the way the Memorial Center isn't just reading and contextualizing the Memorial in the Movement, but expanding the scope of the Memorial, to remember others whose murders were less well known at the time of the design and dedication. Some people know that the Memorial was rededicated in 2000 to Johnnie Mae Chappell, whose name does not appear on the stone table. But here, on this virtual memorial, her name now joins the circle.

It's an impressive extension of the Memorial, making the memory, the purpose, central, and able to re-write the physical design, a most unusual monument.

I returned, exhausted, laden.

***

An incomplete list of goods acquired:

• Bateau, v1 n1.
• Behm-Steinburg, Hugh. Shy Green Fields.
• Berry, Ciaran. The Sphere of Birds.
• Chang, Jennifer. The History of Anonymity.
• Compton, Shanna. For Girls (& Others)
• Doxsee, Julie. Undersleep.
• Eleven Eleven. Volume IV.
• Film Forum Press. A Sing Economy.
• Film Forum Press. Oh One Arrow.
• Goransoon, Johannes. A New Quarantine Will Take My Place.
• Goransson, Johannes. Pilot (Johann the Carousel Horse). [somehow lightly wet & stained]
• Greenberg, Arielle. My Kafka Century.
• Gulf Coast. v19n1, v20n1, and more on the way.
• Jensen, Charles. The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon.
• Lin, Tao. You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am.
• Maxwell, Kristi. Realm Sixty-Four.
• McGlynn, Karyna. Scorpionica.
• Meatpaper, issues 1 & 2.
• Monson, Ander, ed. DIAGRAM III
• Monson, Ander. Our Aperture.
• New South v1n1 (!).
• Ninth Letter v4n1, v4n2, & more on the way.
• Parks, Cecily. Field Folly Snow.
• Pavlic, Ed. Winners Have Yet to Be Announced.
• Phillips, Patrick. Boy.
• The Pinch, v28 n1, and more on the way.
• Saltgrass #2.
• Smith, Abe. Whim Man Mammon.*
• Staples, Heidi Lynn. Dog Girl.
• Wheeler, Susan. Ledger.
• Wilkinson, Joshua Marie. The Book of Flashlights, Clover & Milk.
• Zompa, Vincent. Jacket of the Straits.
• Zwartjes, Arianne. Stitched (A Surface Opens).

This was all I could carry.

***

Had there been more room, more arms, you might have carried more, taken more. But at some point overwhelm makes these decisions for you.