Hello friends,
One of the strangest monuments I've ever seen is in Crosby, North Dakota, a tiny town on the edge of the Bakken oil fields in the northwest corner of the state. The monument is to fracking, the horizontal drilling technique that extracts oil and gas by shattering rock formations thousands of feet beneath the surface of the earth with a high-pressure mix of sand and chemicals.
People make monuments to remember the past. Generally, memorials honor the dead and monuments memorialize an idea or event or person or a specific place. But a monument can be a memorial to someone or something, and a memorial can be a monumental object. Even Memorial Day itself could be considered a monument. It's a day on the calendar, since 1868, to commemorate those who died serving this country. We have Memorial Day to remember, but also as a day intended for contemplation of the prospect of "permanent peace."
The fracking monume…