Posted on 06/23/2012 9:46:50 PM PDT by Timber Rattler
The name might not be recognizable, but you've probably seen a Gadsden flag, typically yellow with a coiled rattlesnake and the warning "Don't tread on me."
The flag was flown by colonists rebelling against British rule. And more recently, it's become the adopted symbol of the Tea parties and conservative Republicans, prompting questions as to whether it's an appropriate theme for merchandise sold at the Gettysburg battlefield bookstore.
There shoppers will find Gadsden flag shot glasses, mugs, magnets and pins. The souvenirs are the only items representing the Revolutionary War sold in the bookstore, said an employee. Mostly, the store offers merchandise that speaks to historic events a century later.
"It isn't sold in a historically relevant context," said Paul Gioni, a battlefield enthusiast from Mahwah, N.J., who contacted the National Park Service and The Evening Sun after visiting the park recently. "This is blatantly political merchandise."
(Excerpt) Read more at eveningsun.com ...
It is obscene.
Bloody Lane now looks like a lovely, manicured grassy ditch instead of the spare, disturbing dirt rut it used to be.
The fence is so shiny new it actually *hurts*.
[for a long time, sections of it were the original period fence...long gone, now]
A hideous parking lot is right up against it.
It looks like something somebody landscaped yesterday.
And yes, you can go through the whole park and never have to get your lazy arse out of the car.
Back in the day, I’ve walked about every inch of it but now everything’s fenced off and inaccessible except the observation tower which is usually full of drunk/stoned teens scaring each other by mock-shoving their buddies off the ledges.
They have effectively erased the entire aspect of the Confederacy and Lee even being there.
[whiny local liberals at work]
I went to take IR photos last year and sometimes go to the December candle event but that’s about it.
Gettysburg is -much- better.
[although I was bummed out when they tore down the “UFO-looking” observation tower]
I go every year, at least once because they have the wonderful Gettysburg Bike Week now.
I’m not on facebook, or I’d advise him to stay in his little Greater New York fishbowl. He isn’t fit for the scary remainder of the United States (and we sure as Hell don’t want jerks like him here).
Thank God for the Delaware River. Perhaps we should consider filling it with alligators (or something similarly deadly).
Guess I was a day late and a dollar short on that one, eh?
I miss my youth when I could go there, wander at will and touch the old dilapidated split rail fences, bullet holes and scars and all.
The place is like a boring Disney ride, now.
When I walked a ways down Bloody Lane during my IR photo outing, people acted like I was p*ssing on graves.
It's been boxed up and sterilized.
On what?
It’s not til July.
Get yer arse out here.
Be a great 4 day vacation for y’all.
:)
Yes.
That is what they have they done.
F them and the annelids they rode in on.
This is somebody’s winter shot but you can see the wretched new parking lot.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6686845095_d8629c5a5d_o.jpg
Oh, and Burnside bridge is now totally blocked off.
If you feel like it, you can jump a barricade fence and slog through the woods and thickets to get to it.
On a high school field trip, we got to get off the bus and wander around it.
*Or* you can sit in your car in a nattily ‘scaped parking lot on the hill above it and sort of glimpse it in the distance.
Bastards.
“Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built. I take it that it is the best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy.”
Abraham Lincoln
The flag, and their collective revulsion to it, is only a “One brick at a time” dismantling of a foundation they loath............because they're lazy.
Not too strange if you consider that a flag is not merely a symbol but a banner designed to transmit a message. The Sodomite's waving of a rainbow high on a pole is their defiant message to God, saying, "Remember your own covenant... YOU have to leave us alone because YOU promised never again to destroy the corrupt earth with a flood."
Of course, that covenant and sign don't preclude judgment by fire, brimstone, earthquakes, or any weird terminal diseases or progressive mental degeneracies. Wave on, fools, and pass your largest and most prominant flag over to the Won.
Perfect response, absolutely perfect.
I read your link and on page 2 I got a distinct raising of the hair on the back of my neck. My first thought on the picture of Selina was “How the hell did she get in this article?” My next-to-next door neighbor is Ms. Gray (won’t use her full name for privacy). I copied the page and took it to her and she was physically shocked. THAT picture is as close to resembling my neighbor as if I took a picture of her today. My neighbor is now tracing her background since they came from the VA/MD/DC area.
Antietam is pretty much as it has been for the 40 years I've been going. The biggest change is that the Park Service has now acquired the Mumma and Roulette farms, which used to be privately held. (The Park Service had an easement, but no trespassing). The fields on the approach to Bloody Lane are now walkable. Bloody Lane itself has been a pleasant, grassy stroll for decades; it has not been a muddy, rutted wagon road since the local farmers got trucks and stuck to the paved roads.
The Bloody Lane watchtower and parking lot have been there forever, but Bloody Lane is entirely walkable. I imagine that the Park Service would prefer that folks not scramble up and down the sides, so as to reduce erosion, but I've never seen that as an issue. (Similarly, climbing on the remains of 150 year old earthworks at other battlefields is discouraged.) Burnsides Bridge is fully accessible, and you don't have to bushwhack through anything to get to it. There is a small parking lot at the top of the hill, and you walk down, and there is a small pullover at the bottom of the hill, and you walk along the creek to the bridge.
No, the road doesn't cross the bridge any more. It has never done so in the years I've been acquainted with the park; perhaps it still did in your youth.
I'm not aware of any confederate memorials being removed. There never were many at Antietam; the confederates in general didn't put up nearly as many memorials as did the Yanks, and Antietam is both a northern battlefield and a confederate defeat. I'm straining to think of any confederate monuments on the battlefield; I'm certainly not aware of any that have been removed.
Yes, the park is laid out for a driving tour. That has been the case since long before my time. It's your choice whether you want to get out of your call and walk, or drive.
Most of the modern houses along Harpers Ferry Road up along Sharpsburg Ridge are now owned by the park under life tenancies held by the current occupants; as these folks pass away, those houses will disappear, and the visual integrity of the western boundary will be much enhanced. Nicodemus Heights remains in private hands with park easements. That is fenced off, and one can only get up there by special arrangement. I'd love to see public access worked out, but that's a future question. The big threat is potential development leaping South Mountain and spawling into the viewshed up the valley. I hope that can be averted.
So what's your beef? Are you reacting to the text of the film in the visitors center? As I mentioned before, I've not sat through that for many, many years, so perhaps there's been a PC intrusion there. I don't see that much else has changed at Antietam, except for the better.
This in particular is what grabbed my attention. Are you complaining that you can't drive directly to the bridge? That's an odd comment from someone who was grumbling about parking lots and people not getting out of their cars.
It's a very short walk from the current parking areas to the bridge. If cars could get up to the bridge, the bridge itself would be sitting in the middle of a parking lot and the visual appeal of the site would be sadly degraded.
There are two points to be made here.
First, I find it a case of the bookstore (which is phenomenal, btw - I’ve made trips up there from the DC area just to spend a couple hours wandering around the bookstore - it’s probably the only bricks/mortar store in the country where one can find a copy of “Bayonet! Forward” for instance). Going and hitting spots on the battlefield itself were added bonuses for the trips) knowing their audience and would question whether that means Libs tend to stay away from a crucial piece of American History.
Second, as much as I love it the bookstore has substantial sections dedicated to all sorts of claptrap about women’s involvement in the battle, slavery, and other attempts to apply current-day standards to life a century and a half ago. I’m not saying that those aspects are unimportant and shouldn’t be covered, but the amount of floorspace they occupy in the store is way out of proportion to the actual impact on the actual Battle and War. And - an important distinction here - to a large extent the material being sold (or, perhaps, eating up floorspace by not being sold ..) isn’t reasoned, fact-based analysis but rather historical revisionism aimed at perpetuating the PC thinking of today.
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