The June 29 editorial by Susanna Rodell is certainly excellent. Here is an excerpt (from the NPS web site):
"What I was watching was a mammoth act of human will, a huge, unusual effort being made to save something solely because of its place in our emotions, in our collective history. It was, and is, an enormous act of love. All these humans, from the guys in hard hats driving the forklifts to the members of all the historical societies to the engineers to the Park Service folks, working their hearts out.

Watching the operation, you can't help thinking of the pyramids. It does the heart good to know that here in the late 20th century people are still willing to put all this collective wisdom and energy -- not to mention millions of bucks -- to work to save something that's really just a symbol, not religious, not political, just something tall and grand and old that has stood there all those years delivering the purest gift imaginable: light."
(c) 1999 Raleigh News and Observer