Gettysburg

We went to Gettysburg because it was 'there'.  We literally were driving past the site.  There was no excuse not to stop. This is the only Civil War battle that is even hazily remembered 150 years after it was fought.  The reason?  Mainly, the 77 word Gettysburg Address given by President Lincoln five months after the battle.  Unique for the time, he dedicated the cemetery established at the battle site, with the Gettysburg Address. This speech was written by Lincoln in his carriage on the way to Pennsylvania.  His speech was a shocking scandal at the time. 

It's hard for us in the 21st century to understand the importance attached to 'oratory' in the 19th century.  This is an era with limited entertainment - getting to see and hear a real orator talk on an issue for 2 or 3 hours would be the same as us attending the hot new movie today.  Lincoln spoke for less than 2 minutes - following a speaker who had talked for about 2 hours.  People felt cheated - his speech was supposed to be the main attraction.  Very few journalists understood the importance of the speech in summarizing the reason for the Civil War.  Lincoln's remarks have endured in America similar to Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech.  Because of its brevity, most of us at some point in school memorized it - and it was often the first time we had to stand up in front of the class and 'recite'.

However, it wasn't until I stood on the battlefield that I understood the real meaning of Lincoln's speech.  Gettysburg is a horrendous place.  It's beautiful which makes it all the more horrific.  More than 7000 men were killed outright here.  More than 30,000 were wounded, and 10,000 were captured or just outright missing.  This was a 3 day battle fought in major and minor skirmishes (little battles), around and through the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  It is the biggest battle (and virtually the only battle) fought in the North.  This was a gamble by Robert E Lee, the Confederate supreme commander,  to win a major battle on Northern soil which would then become the springboard for a political settlement of the war.  Lee knew that the Confederacy could not conceivably win an protracted war.  

Looking at the museum and the artifacts from the battle and a comparison of the equipment of both sides, it was apparent that this lost battle was the 'high water mark' of the Confederacy.  The curators personalized this museum.  For me, there was a visceral impact of the huge numbers of young men who died here.  There's always the question when so many die:  Did they die in vain?  I must say the answer is grudgingly 'no'.  If Lee, with a victory at Gettysburg, would have been able to force a political settlement of the war, the question of slavery would have remained unsettled, and the dissolution of the United States at the point of territorial expansion across the continent would have had disastrous consequences. 

I think there were two reasons that this visit to a 150 year old battle site affected me so.  One, we toured the museum with a large number of 16 to 18 year old teenagers.  (A high school history class was having a field trip.)  Juxtapositioned with the pictures of the actual soldiers, it was as if the Civil War soldiers had come to life.  150 years ago, the boys swirling around me in the museum would have been in this battle.  Second, Gettysburg, a little Pennsylvania farm town, with the misfortune of being a crossroads of 10 roads fanning out across the countryside, was a victim of the battlefield carnage.  The 1800 residents were left with 30,000 wounded soldiers, thousands of rotting corpses - both human and animal littering not just one field, but  lots of fields surrounding the entire town.  The trauma and disaster post-battle is almost unimaginable.  Diaries from townspeople talk about the 'stench' that lasted for months.  The screams of the dying and wounded were endured by all the residents.  Every building was littered with the wounded.  The bulk of the armies moved on - and left the carnage behind for the Gettysburg civilians to cope with.

The museum here was huge.  It included not only artifacts, but also photographs, and a mini-history lesson to set the battle in context.  The zenith experience of the museum was the cyclorama - a 360 degree painting done in the 1880's depicting the battle.  The artist consulted veterans who were there to insure accuracy, and I'm sure that many veterans who witnessed the painting 20 years after the battle experienced post traumatic stress.  I found it very stressful, and I didn't personally know people who were wounded or who died either standing next to me or by my hand.

They call the Gettysburg battlefield 'sacred ground', and it really is.  This is the battle that was the death rattle of slavery.  If, for no other reason, that makes the Union victory and the soldiers who sacrificed their lives to achieve it worthwhile.

I hope my pictures convey the depth and importance of this place in the building of who we are as Americans.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011GettysburgPATour3CivilWarBattlefield?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfHtJ2T7ITo-QE# 

Cooperstown from a new angle

Cooperstown was very lucky to have a native son who decided to put the town on the map.  His name was Samuel Clark, and he was instrumental in bringing the Baseball Hall of Fame to town.  He wasn't content to stop there.  He convinced New York State to located the New York Historical Society in Cooperstown, and he personally developed two additional museums -both gems of the first order.  One, The Farmer's Museum, is a recreation of an 18th century working 'village', and the second is the restoration and transformation of James Fenimore Cooper's childhood home into a first class museum focusing on American art and crafts. 

The Farmer's Museum closes on October 31st, but the Fenimore Art Museum was open and ready for business.  We both thoroughly enjoyed not only the house's interior, but also it's superb exterior landscaping and scenery.  As always, the pictures tell the story:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011CooperstownTour2FenimoreMuseum?authkey=Gv1sRgCO3K15TNz8HDXA#

Today Drake fulfilled a lifelong wish:  He got to see the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Believe me, it's not exactly easy to get to this place.  Cooperstown, New York (population 1800) is in the middle of nowhere, otherwise called the Mohawk Valley.  It's smack dab in the middle of dairy farm country.  We left Franconia yesterday and drove and drove and drove to get here.  We finally reached the exit on the Interstate, and THEN we drove another 40 minutes.  Cooperstown in a quaint little town filled with architecture that goes all the way back to the 18th century.   It's actually named not for James Fenimore Cooper, but rather for his father.

The entire downtown area (location of the Baseball Hall of Fame) is filled with souvenir shops, baseball card shops, equipment shops, buy a bat shops, a wax museum, and little restaurants and cafes.  It's surrounded with motels, hotel, inns, and  bed/breakfast mansions.  No wonder!  At peak times of the year thousands of people visit.  Inductee weekend can see 80,000 visitors.  (Can you imagine a town of 1800 hosting 80,000 people?)

We visited at one of the most uncrowded times; only in January are there fewer visitors - can you say 'snow'.  Instead of thousands of people thronging the museum, there were literally less than 10 people visiting today.  We got to see every exhibit, take photographs and look at everything completely unimpeded.  I asked Drake for his impressions about the Hall of Fame, and the verb he used was "surprised".  His expectation was that the building would be 'old' (it wasn't), and that it would be jam packed with glass cases full of baseball stuff.  Instead, we saw an open, airy space on 3 floors, and an exhibit policy that reflected the credo that 'less is more'. 

Some highlights:   First and foremost was the plaque gallery - individual  bronze plaques with a bas relief sculpture of the inductee's head (wearing the baseball team cap the inductee chose) together with a short recitation of their accomplishments.   Additionally, I loved the case of World Series 'rings'.  The 19th century equipment display was fascinating.  The statistical part of the game was handled in an interesting way.  Drake really enjoyed being in a first class museum dedicated to his greatest interest:  baseball.  As he put it, "This place makes baseball seem important because the museum is of such high quality."  We marveled over some things, learned some things, and saw more 'art' that I expected.

This was a supremely fun day.  I took a bunch of photos (of course), and hope you can get a sense of this place from the pictures.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011CooperstownBaseballHallOfFame?authkey=Gv1sRgCK7fh7uknZPMnwE