ChiTownScion
Call Me a Cab
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Good old San Antonio, home of my wife's family. Spent 20 years there, one weekend.
Speaking of declining standards, what is it with the American tendency to turn battlefields into tourist traps? I can understand a museum or an educational facility, but the idea of camera-snapping vacationers wandering around striking poses and eating hot dogs, and buying bumper stickers and t-shirts and key chains and other shoddy trinkets has always left me ice cold.
Even the Russians are getting in on the act now -- you can get an all-inclusive three day tour of Stalingrad, including restaurant vouchers for "Russian, Cossack, Ukrainian, Italian, German, Indian or Tatar cuisine." What, no McDonaldski?
Speaking of declining standards, what is it with the American tendency to turn battlefields into tourist traps? I can understand a museum or an educational facility, but the idea of camera-snapping vacationers wandering around striking poses and eating hot dogs, and buying bumper stickers and t-shirts and key chains and other shoddy trinkets has always left me ice cold.
It depends upon the battlefield and the adjoining town. Gettysburg has always been notorious: the "General Pickett Buffet" always rankled me. But they finally did bring down that ugly observation tower a few years ago when the land was purchased by the NPS. The battlefield itself is free from commercial intrusion- as is any owned by the National Park Service.
And Sharpsburg, Maryland is still relatively free of any commercial hoopla that would detract from a visit to Antietam. In many areas (northern Virginia and the sites of the various battles of the Atlanta Campaign, for example), suburban sprawl have destroyed more battlefield sites than cheesy tourist gimmicks.
I gain more spiritual enrichment from walking a Civil War battlefield than listening to a thousand sermons from some pulpit screamer could ever accord me. Coming from Maine as you do, I'd especially recommend that, one day, you witness a sunset on a clear autumn day from Little Round Top, Gettysburg: what was accomplished there on July 2, 1863, by a depleted Maine regiment, out of ammunition and under the command of a college professor turned lieutenant colonel, will live in the annals of American history as much as Valley Forge or Omaha Beach. The "ghost tours" and t shirt shops in town can't diminish that experience one iota.
Speaking of declining standards, what is it with the American tendency to turn battlefields into tourist traps? I can understand a museum or an educational facility, but the idea of camera-snapping vacationers wandering around striking poses and eating hot dogs, and buying bumper stickers and t-shirts and key chains and other shoddy trinkets has always left me ice cold.
It depends upon the battlefield and the adjoining town. Gettysburg has always been notorious: the "General Pickett Buffet" always rankled me. But they finally did bring down that ugly observation tower a few years ago when the land was purchased by the NPS. The battlefield itself is free from commercial intrusion- as is any owned by the National Park Service.
And Sharpsburg, Maryland is still relatively free of any commercial hoopla that would detract from a visit to Antietam. In many areas (northern Virginia and the sites of the various battles of the Atlanta Campaign, for example), suburban sprawl have destroyed more battlefield sites than cheesy tourist gimmicks.
I gain more spiritual enrichment from walking a Civil War battlefield than listening to a thousand sermons from some pulpit scream could ever afford me. Coming from Maine as you do, I'd especially recommend that, one day, you witness a sunset on a clear autumn day from Little Round Top, Gettysburg: what was accomplished there on July 2, 1863, by a depleted Maine regiment, out of ammunition and under the command of a college professor turned lieutenant colonel, will live in the annals of American history as much as Valley Forge or Omaha Beach. The "ghost tours" and t shirt shops in town can't diminish that experience one iota.
+1, I get chills at Gettysburg, and mostly from the events on Little Round Top. That one action potentially changed the course of the war, certainly helping to shorten it. I do believe that by Gettysburg, Chamberlain was a newly minted full Colonel. His life was certainly one of the greatest lived of his generation, and if it wasn't true it would be too unbelievable as fiction.
All the 'McDonaldskis' were shuttered in a tit-for-tat response to all the western sanctions imposes after all the shenanigans in Ukraine.
Otherwise I'm sure they'd be in on the action.
Good old San Antonio, home of my wife's family. Spent 20 years there, one weekend.
+1, I get chills at Gettysburg, and mostly from the events on Little Round Top. That one action potentially changed the course of the war, certainly helping to shorten it. I do believe that by Gettysburg, Chamberlain was a newly minted full Colonel. His life was certainly one of the greatest lived of his generation, and if it wasn't true it would be too unbelievable as fiction.
I'd hope at least he'd be offended by the German restaurant.
That was the U.S. Army added the parapet in the 1850s.
Speaking of declining standards, what is it with the American tendency to turn battlefields into tourist traps? I can understand a museum or an educational facility, but the idea of camera-snapping vacationers wandering around striking poses and eating hot dogs, and buying bumper stickers and t-shirts and key chains and other shoddy trinkets has always left me ice cold.
It depends upon the battlefield and the adjoining town. Gettysburg has always been notorious: the "General Pickett Buffet" always rankled me. But they finally did bring down that ugly observation tower a few years ago when the land was purchased by the NPS. The battlefield itself is free from commercial intrusion- as is any owned by the National Park Service.
And Sharpsburg, Maryland is still relatively free of any commercial hoopla that would detract from a visit to Antietam. In many areas (northern Virginia and the sites of the various battles of the Atlanta Campaign, for example), suburban sprawl have destroyed more battlefield sites than cheesy tourist gimmicks.
I gain more spiritual enrichment from walking a Civil War battlefield than listening to a thousand sermons from some pulpit screamer could ever accord me. Coming from Maine as you do, I'd especially recommend that, one day, you witness a sunset on a clear autumn day from Little Round Top, Gettysburg: what was accomplished there on July 2, 1863, by a depleted Maine regiment, out of ammunition and under the command of a college professor turned lieutenant colonel, will live in the annals of American history as much as Valley Forge or Omaha Beach. The "ghost tours" and t shirt shops in town can't diminish that experience one iota.
As much as every one here hates the 60s, that is when preservation really took off. I can understand that it was hard to preserve Revolutionary battle fields, the towns had to grow, but, by the 1950s, you would think they would know! I suppose, the WWII Veterans were tired of war, so they had little sympathy for battle fields, better to look at new houses for families!
As much as every one here hates the 60s, that is when preservation really took off. I can understand that it was hard to preserve Revolutionary battle fields, the towns had to grow, but, by the 1950s, you would think they would know! I suppose, the WWII Veterans were tired of war, so they had little sympathy for battle fields, better to look at new houses for families!
Yes, but the Texan did the demolition on the rest of the Alamo, and almost steam rolled the rest. We like to think that past generations were more sympathetic to old buildings, but that is actually a pretty new concept. I guise, we should be glad that any of it survived!
This still goes on today. Tiger Stadium in Detroit stood abandoned for ten years while people argued about what to do with it, and it finally got torn down, leaving nothing behind but a flagpole and a big vacant lot, and people are still debating what to do with it.
This still goes on today. Tiger Stadium in Detroit stood abandoned for ten years while people argued about what to do with it, and it finally got torn down, leaving nothing behind but a flagpole and a big vacant lot, and people are still debating what to do with it.
The Astrodome in Houston has been sitting there empty for 15 years now, and the county refuses to do anything with it. Some people want it preserved (because a building built in 1965 is a major historical landmark, apparently), but no one can figure out what to do with it or wants to pay for it. It's also going to cost money to tear it down, and nobody want to pay for that either. So it sits there and rots. It's a rat-infested crumbling pile of rubble, and if people really cared about it, they'd let it die an honorable death. But they don't. So it rots in place.
People are debating what to do with Detroit.