My essay "The Slurry Wall," originally published in Copper Nickel, was named a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays 2019.
The essay is an examination of the hyperbolic praise heaped up a single, gigantic artifact at the 9/11 Memorial Museum—the Slurry Wall. Why did the museum's director, the project's original architect, and a New York Times art critic fall all over themselves to exalt what basically was, and is, a really big basement wall? To find out and, more so, to understand why their statements made me so angry, I researched the engineering and construction of the twin towers, their destruction, and my own feelings about world-changing catastrophes and misplaced patriotism.