Have you ever bought a fundraising brick?

I suppose they could be rejected on the basis of your offering price.

check the fine print

The bricks are $100 each but it is a cause I can get behind so I'll probably buy a couple, maybe three.

There doesn't seem to be any fine print! That's what makes it all so exciting!

What's a fundraising brick?

That's when they sell bricks to fund certain projects. They'll build a pathway or something with the bricks. Usually people have the bricks inscribed with their name or the name of someone important to them.

Yes, for the local museum. I think myself and business partner went in on that together, but I don't remember, might have been just me. The brick became a part of a brick patio. That was a neat museum. I later showed a couple of pieces there, but no connection between that and the brick.

Did you put your names on it? Or the name of your gallery? Have you ever been back to revisit your brick?

Yes, but I forget which name, the gallery or mine. I did check it out once in a desultory fashion, not sure I even found the brick (had gone there to see a show, have little patience for brick name studying).

I study the brick name at one of our neighborhood parks. I find it fascinating. I've just never seen one that said anything other than a person's name or "in memory of (person's name).

I'm thinking of buying one that says "Playing in the mud is the most important meal of the day".....

What does "On behalf of the 4 o'clock dogs" entail?

The only time I considered buying a fundraising brick (and very briefly so) was for Leo Laporte as he moved from his old TWIT (This Week in Tech) studio into a much larger set of multimedia studios in Petaluma, California.

If it is cost prohibitive - they may not be able to print it. They may limit the number of letters to keep the cost down. That would be my only thought on not allowing particular phrasings.

i wonder if they'd let you pay homage to a favourite place in Thailand, Phuket

or Newfoundland's little village, Dildo

They have letter blocks to fill out. You have to include spaces and punctuation but everything fits so I'm thinking it would be okay. Longer phrases cost a bit more but not much more.

The 4:00 dogs are a group of dogs that play in the field every day around 4:00. They're very nice to let us use the field so I thought I would contribute on behalf of the dogs.

Here are some very important bricks. I think it's amazing. It's saying "I was here, I lived, worked, played and loved right here.
Credits to NPR




May 31, 2012 Brick by brick, Guenther Demnig is working to change how the Holocaust is publicly remembered in Germany.

On a recent afternoon, the 62-year-old Berlin-born artist is on his knees on a sidewalk in a prosperous section of Berlin's Charlottenburg district, working a hammer and small trowel. He is installing dozens of small, square brass bricks, each one inscribed with the name — and details about the death of — people who once lived in apartment houses on Pestalozzi Strasse.

"Today we are laying 45 stones for Jewish victims that lived in these houses," Demnig says as he secures the brass brick for Martin Lwowski, a former resident deported in 1943 and murdered at Auschwitz.

Wearing a cowboy hat and denim from head to toe, Demnig is watched by a quiet throng, many dressed in their Sunday, or Sabbath, best, out of respect for the dead. He first got the idea for the Stolperstein, or "stumbling stones," as part of an art project back in the mid-1990s when he installed 55 such commemorative stones in Berlin sidewalks.


Enlarge
Esme Nicholson/NPR
Guenther Demnig is the artist and sculptor behind the stumbling stones. Here, he installs new bricks in Berlin. He says formal memorials are too abstract. Not so with the stumbling stones. "Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you," he says.


Esme Nicholson/NPR Guenther Demnig is the artist and sculptor behind the stumbling stones. Here, he installs new bricks in Berlin. He says formal memorials are too abstract. Not so with the stumbling stones. "Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you," he says.
In the ensuing years, the project has mushroomed. Now, there are more than 30,000 commemorative bricks in dozens of cities and towns across Germany.

A More Personal Memorial

Demnig relies on local residents and schools, as well as religious and secular groups, to research the victims, their last address and where they were killed. He then makes and installs the bricks with help from two apprentices.

This kind of memorial is more personal, he says, because it commemorates where the terror began, likely with a Gestapo or SS raid on a victim's apartment.

Germans have long anguished over and debated how to best memorialize victims of the Nazi regime: millions of European Jews murdered in the Holocaust as well as political opponents, homosexuals, Roma and disabled people. There are museums and some big memorials, but to Demnig and many others, those are hardly adequate.

"I think the large Holocaust memorial here [in Berlin] will always remain abstract. You have to make the decision to visit it," Demnig says. "But not with the stumbling blocks. Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you."

'Everyone' Responsible For Remembering

These latest bricks, which are always privately funded, were organized by 52-year-old Hendrik Czeczatka, who spent part of his childhood in an apartment building on Pestalozzi Strasse where his grandmother lived.

"I grew up right here. I played football in this courtyard. I broke that window right there," Czeczatka says, pointing, "much to the dismay of my grandmother."


The Two-Way
A Family's Visit To Holocaust 'Stumbling Stones' Evokes Strong EmotionsJust off the street in the courtyard of a 19th century tenement housing block is a synagogue, built in 1918. It survived the Kristallnacht attacks in November 1938, during which Germans torched and ransacked Jewish homes, stores and synagogues.

Czeczatka remembers his grandmother telling him how she instructed the Nazis not to burn the synagogue because Aryans lived in the surrounding apartments. After Czeczatka moved into the family apartment about 15 years ago, he began to research just who lived in his building. He found names of more than 40 Jewish residents who were rounded up and deported to death camps, mostly Theresienstadt.

Before 1933, Charlottenburg had the largest Jewish population in Berlin. Yet Czeczatka was alarmed that so few households in the area had bothered to request Demnig's bricks. So he started raising money and awareness.

"Everybody in the first place is responsible, individually, for remembering. One can't pass off everything to the state. And we are the state anyway," Czeczatka says. "All of us must continue to insist that Nazis are not welcome, that we must keep the memory alive and learn from our history so that it does not happen again."

Critics: Blocks Victimize Anew

All of us must continue to insist that Nazis are not welcome, that we must keep the memory alive and learn from our history so that it does not happen again.

- Hendrik Czeczatka
One of the onlookers at the informal, yet emotionally charged and police-protected bricklaying ceremony is Lala Suesskind, former chairman of the synagogue's committee. Suesskind has come to meet Czeczatka and shake his hand.

"That this is the initiative of a non-Jewish resident and his wife really moves me," Suesskind says.

The brick project has its critics. Some homeowners elsewhere have complained quietly that having quasi-tombstones in the sidewalk outside is bad for property values and business.

But the main complaints are that the bricks only highlight victimhood, and that when people, dogs and bikes trample over the names of the dead, some argue, they are victimized a second time.

In Munich, city officials and a large influential Jewish group rejected the project. In fact, they banned the bricks after arguing that they desecrated the memory of the victims.

But Helmut Loelhoeffel, coordinator of the Charlottenburg Stumbling Block Initiative, believes those criticisms are misplaced.

"Six million Jews were killed, murdered. The stumbling blocks make clear that it was one plus one plus one plus one," Loelhoeffel says. "It makes clear that they were all individuals."


May 31, 2012 Brick by brick, Guenther Demnig is working to change how the Holocaust is publicly remembered in Germany.

On a recent afternoon, the 62-year-old Berlin-born artist is on his knees on a sidewalk in a prosperous section of Berlin's Charlottenburg district, working a hammer and small trowel. He is installing dozens of small, square brass bricks, each one inscribed with the name — and details about the death of — people who once lived in apartment houses on Pestalozzi Strasse.

"Today we are laying 45 stones for Jewish victims that lived in these houses," Demnig says as he secures the brass brick for Martin Lwowski, a former resident deported in 1943 and murdered at Auschwitz.

Wearing a cowboy hat and denim from head to toe, Demnig is watched by a quiet throng, many dressed in their Sunday, or Sabbath, best, out of respect for the dead. He first got the idea for the Stolperstein, or "stumbling stones," as part of an art project back in the mid-1990s when he installed 55 such commemorative stones in Berlin sidewalks.

Esme Nicholson/NPR Guenther Demnig is the artist and sculptor behind the stumbling stones. Here, he installs new bricks in Berlin. He says formal memorials are too abstract. Not so with the stumbling stones. "Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you," he says.
In the ensuing years, the project has mushroomed. Now, there are more than 30,000 commemorative bricks in dozens of cities and towns across Germany.

A More Personal Memorial

Demnig relies on local residents and schools, as well as religious and secular groups, to research the victims, their last address and where they were killed. He then makes and installs the bricks with help from two apprentices.

This kind of memorial is more personal, he says, because it commemorates where the terror began, likely with a Gestapo or SS raid on a victim's apartment.

Germans have long anguished over and debated how to best memorialize victims of the Nazi regime: millions of European Jews murdered in the Holocaust as well as political opponents, homosexuals, Roma and disabled people. There are museums and some big memorials, but to Demnig and many others, those are hardly adequate.

"I think the large Holocaust memorial here [in Berlin] will always remain abstract. You have to make the decision to visit it," Demnig says. "But not with the stumbling blocks. Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you."

'Everyone' Responsible For Remembering

These latest bricks, which are always privately funded, were organized by 52-year-old Hendrik Czeczatka, who spent part of his childhood in an apartment building on Pestalozzi Strasse where his grandmother lived.

"I grew up right here. I played football in this courtyard. I broke that window right there," Czeczatka says, pointing, "much to the dismay of my grandmother."

The Two-Way
A Family's Visit To Holocaust 'Stumbling Stones' Evokes Strong EmotionsJust off the street in the courtyard of a 19th century tenement housing block is a synagogue, built in 1918. It survived the Kristallnacht attacks in November 1938, during which Germans torched and ransacked Jewish homes, stores and synagogues.

Czeczatka remembers his grandmother telling him how she instructed the Nazis not to burn the synagogue because Aryans lived in the surrounding apartments. After Czeczatka moved into the family apartment about 15 years ago, he began to research just who lived in his building. He found names of more than 40 Jewish residents who were rounded up and deported to death camps, mostly Theresienstadt.

Before 1933, Charlottenburg had the largest Jewish population in Berlin. Yet Czeczatka was alarmed that so few households in the area had bothered to request Demnig's bricks. So he started raising money and awareness.

"Everybody in the first place is responsible, individually, for remembering. One can't pass off everything to the state. And we are the state anyway," Czeczatka says. "All of us must continue to insist that Nazis are not welcome, that we must keep the memory alive and learn from our history so that it does not happen again."

Critics: Blocks Victimize Anew

All of us must continue to insist that Nazis are not welcome, that we must keep the memory alive and learn from our history so that it does not happen again.

- Hendrik Czeczatka
One of the onlookers at the informal, yet emotionally charged and police-protected bricklaying ceremony is Lala Suesskind, former chairman of the synagogue's committee. Suesskind has come to meet Czeczatka and shake his hand.

"That this is the initiative of a non-Jewish resident and his wife really moves me," Suesskind says.

The brick project has its critics. Some homeowners elsewhere have complained quietly that having quasi-tombstones in the sidewalk outside is bad for property values and business.

But the main complaints are that the bricks only highlight victimhood, and that when people, dogs and bikes trample over the names of the dead, some argue, they are victimized a second time.

In Munich, city officials and a large influential Jewish group rejected the project. In fact, they banned the bricks after arguing that they desecrated the memory of the victims.

But Helmut Loelhoeffel, coordinator of the Charlottenburg Stumbling Block Initiative, believes those criticisms are misplaced.

"Six million Jews were killed, murdered. The stumbling blocks make clear that it was one plus one plus one plus one," Loelhoeffel says. "It makes clear that they were all individuals."

I never put my money into a brick. Are these ones which people walk upon, and, how is the security to make sure nobody comes along, pries the brick up and exits with it?

I've thought about it - never have personally though.

I have seen some that say others things rather than a name/business or dedication. Some with sayings and stuff.

I've also heard of some being regreted because of them being offensive, but not because you want something besides a name.

I think messages or quotes would be kind of cool but I wouldn't do anything offensive.

I thought about doing a kind of a "find a word" thing but it turns out I'm not clever enough to make it all work.

Well, your money still went to the cause.
Isn't the brick symbolic?

Why would someone pry up a brick that says, "go cougars", "Betsy's Hair Design" or something? Seems like a lot of work.