Today, I’ll be thinking less about the World Trade Center and more about my father and the relentless – probably unique – ability of New York City to bury its dead and move on without a backward glance.

My father was born in Manhattan in 1923, in a tenement building off Columbus Circle. A few years later, he moved to Brooklyn, a borough that was considered the country back then, a place that had more horses than cars. By the time he left there for good in 1966, it wasn’t the country anymore, that’s for sure.

He worked for Sea-Land, a shipping company that was one of the World Trade Center’s original tenants, and one of my very earliest memories is of my older brother and me playing in the company’s unfinished offices in one of the towers before the complex opened to the public in 1973.

Like many, probably most, New Yorkers, my father hated the Twin Towers at first, preferring the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, which had gone up during his childhood.

He’d seen King Kong when it came out in 1933, he explained, and he just couldn’t see the big ape climbing the towers. By the late ‘70s – after Philippe Petit tightrope walked across them, George Willig scaled them, Owen Quinn parachuted from them, and King Kong himself had been shot off them in a 1976 remake – he’d come around.

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Last month, a New York “community board” approved a $750,000 installation by artist Tom Otterness for a public library in lower Manhattan: lion sculptures, paid for by a private donor, in a public space. Now, a cry has gone round the neighborhood to reject the work.

Tom Otterness

You may not recognize his name, but if you’ve spent much time in New York you’ve probably seen Otterness’ cartoonish bronze men and animals. Largely thanks to public art funds–paid for with public revenue–he often places his sculptures near schools, playgrounds, parks and libraries.

His little guys can be seen throughout the 14th St. subway station at Eighth Ave., hiding in nooks and crannies. He has made pieces for Europe and Asia and even designed a float for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. With a seemingly inoffensive cast of characters, Otterness has proven irresistible to art world bureaucrats, who continue to give him commissions.

But now, Otterness is being exposed as a killer. In 1977, he made a film in which he “rescued” a dog from a shelter, tied it up and, as the animal wagged its tail, shot it dead. The movie, which Otterness called “Shot Dog Film,” repeatedly shows the brutal execution.

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