Old, Worn Bibles: What Did She Feel?

What is the emotion here?

A simple photo for today, taken back in September standing in the Dunker Church. A visitor, giddy and laughing, gets so close to the Dunker Bible standing inside of the footprint of the Dunker Church on the eve of the anniversary of battle.

Why? What is it that made her so happy?

Was it knowledge? That surely came into play. She needed to have some background and understanding of that place, she needed a feel for the forces at play. But it's not knowledge she's getting from those pages. It's just a book like any other.

On Monday, Obama laid his hand on a plain 1853 pocket Bible, published by Oxford University Press. To open it, to read it, it is a King James Bible. Likewise, the Dunker Bible is a plain English Bible, easily read. The 23rd psalm is the same in both books as any other hunk of dead trees and cow's skin you find on shelves and in churches across America.

So what's the power?

It's the talisman. It's the meaning. The book doesn't really matter all that much. It adds weight, but not substance. If Lincoln had set his hand upon Punch Magazine to swear out the oath of office, if the Dunkers had read from a sacred copy of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus right before the battle at Sharpsburg, we would drool over those pages of wood-pulp and ink.

It's the fact that these object were there, but it's something more than that fact too.

It's the romance and wonder of that proximity. It's the understanding that we cannot shake Lincoln's hand any longer. We cannot hear the Dunker's songs that Sunday before the battle any longer.

But we can meet the library's silent witnesses. So we stand slack-jawed with our camera, not gaining knowledge. There is none to be gained from these books.

We instead gain something to feed our soul.

Divided Maryland: Antietam 150th Interpretive Talk

Sanctuary (noun). 1. A place of safety, refuge or protection.

A few weeks ago, I spent an amazing weekend interpreting the Dunker Church. Not many of you were able to visit that amazing place on that amazing weekend.

For those of you out there who didn't get to see my talks that weekend, or for those of you who would like to live them again, check out this MP3 recording of the presentation, with added music and sound.

Close your eyes and transport yourself to a hard church pew in Western Maryland...

MP3 Audio of "Divided Maryland" (19 MB, approx. 20 minutes)

Four Days in Heaven Spending Four Days in Hell

The German Baptist Brethren Bible on the front table inside the sanctuary of the
Mumma Meetinghouse, 150 years after it sat there on the eve of the battle.

I spent four days this past weekend wallowing in the depths of hell. Around me swirled the maelstrom of battle, a spinning vortex of blood, death, destruction and loss. Outside the windows, every patch of ground is a reminder of the sacrifice and heartache.

If you squinted your eyes, or better yet closed them completely, you could see it all.

The Dunker Church (more accurately called the "Mumma Meetinghouse" or "German Baptist Brethren Meetinghouse) is a purely magical place, an amazing environment in which to weave tales of meaning for visitors.

Those tales were ones of fear and trepidation, as pacifists confronted the awful prospect of war. Those tales were ones of hope and heartache, as Emancipation came within a hair's breadth of freeing the men and women enslaved on Sharpsburg's landscape, but not quite close enough in 1863. Those tales were ones of horror and shock, as Civil War photos became portals to the past and the present.

I kept getting asked the question, over and over again, "aren't you tired?"

But the opposite was true. Each interaction with a visitor refreshed me, uplifted me and brought light to my step. By Monday, I could barely hobble out of bed and slide into my green and grey uniform. But the pain was a good one, the aches were almost therapeutic.

My hat / PD NPS Photo

I had forgotten the joy of seeing someone have that moment of new appreciation for a place, whether that place be old friend or new acquaintance.

All told, I spoke to the majority of the people who visited Sharpsburg this weekend and wandered onto the battlefield. The location was prime, the crowd flow was intense, but the opportunities for meanings were limitless. From the fight against slavery to the fight over secession, from smouldering Libya to the streets of New York, the Dunker Church became a time machine allowing all of us to view ourselves from wild perspectives and amazing heights.

Tune in next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel and you might get a glimpse at some of the meanings I shared with visitors.

Maryland, it turns out, was an amazing, violent, vibrant, frightening and befuddling place in 1862. It only takes a time machine to visit it.

"Round Eye" at The Wall: The Power of What We Call Things

I went on a battlefield tour this weekend with Garry Adelman. It was an amazing experience, as any tour with Garry is, because he delves into how we conceptualize landscapes just as much as what happened on those landscapes 150 years ago. My mind was churning the entire time. Of anyone, both those who work for those places and those who just generally love those places, Garry (and his partner in crime Tim Smith) is tops on the list of most effective living time machines. Like always, Garry got me thinking on 15 different levels, and I'd wager that the next few weeks' posts will all be inspired by tidbits and nuggets he mentioned at Antietam this past Sunday.

Something began getting to me across the 5 hours of the program. Garry referred quite consistently to the soldiers dressed in blue uniforms as "Yankees."

This isn't to fault Garry in particular. This terminology oozes from every program, lecture, film, documentary and monograph on the war. Our culture on the whole refers to the soldiers who fought under the flag of the United States as "Yankees."

Why is this derisive colloquialism deemed OK by our profession and culture?

Imagine yourself at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., standing reading the book of names to find a particular person on those panels. For me, it's always my mom's friend's brother, James Sacco who died in 1968. That's about the closest the Vietnam War came to my family. My mom and her friend drove around Syracuse, NY in Jimmy's car after he had died. Even as distant as that echo, I still look up Jimmy's name each time I'm on that end of the wall. It reminds me of how close war came, and how close it can still come today.

Whatever the name you might be searching for, imagine yourself leafing through the book and overhearing a DC Licensed Tour Guide talking to a group of tourists nearby:

...The Tet Offensive was extremely destructive for the Round Eye forces. All told, by the end of its first phase alone, nearly 17,000 Round Eyes had been killed, with another 20,000 wounded. Viet Cong mowed down the Round Eyes like so-much wheat....

Think about that. Think about the rage that might rise in your stomach. Think about the punches that might get thrown by a man wearing a leather vest who came to "visit" a friend on that wall. I think about the cheers I would throw up to the heavens as he threw that punch. It's just not the right place to say something like that.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a sacred place, crafted by Chinese-American artist Maya Ying Lin. It is a cenotaph, a cemetery-in-absentia. It is not someplace anyone would even think to use a derogatory term like, "Round Eye."

Civil War battlefields are sacred places, forged through blood by thousands of soldiers. They are cemeteries in actuality, where remains still lay beneath the soil. So why denigrate the Federal soldier with the colloquialism "Yankee?" Doesn't consistent use of this term withdraw a modicum of respect due the defenders of our Nation?

Weren't the men fighting in that blue uniform United States Soldiers? Weren't they United States Volunteers fighting for the United States Volunteer Army? Wasn't it a Federal army tasked with preserving the Federal union known as the United States of America from annihilation?

What change in how we understand the whole war, the very atomic structure of the Civil War, would a simple shift in language provide? Imagine standing in the Bloody Lane or at Burnside's Bridge and saying, "the United States soldiers surged forward toward the Confederates," or, "after the smoke cleared, hundreds of Federal soldiers lay dead in this field."

It's interesting that only in the context of the American Civil War is open and flagrant derision of the United States army and the men who fought in it acceptable. Such a curious thing, this Civil War.

"I hates the Yankee nation

And everything they do,

I hates the Declaration

Of Independence too;

"I hates the glorious Union --

'Tis dripping with our blood --

I hates their striped banner,

I fit it all I could."

Good Ol' Rebel,

purportedly by Major James Randolph, CSA

Experience + Interaction

Or, my final thoughts on the Illumination...

What do our historic sites and museums offer to visitors? More importantly, what should we strive to offer? Right now, I think many of our historic sites offer two different things: a variety of experiences and access to a wealth of information. Sites like Antietam offer a number of different experiences – from taking a tour over the battleground where so many fought and died, to driving through the battlefield at night seeing thousands of luminaries, each one representing a life. Our historic sites also offer access to knowledge and information – many times through those experiences they offer. Continuing to use Antietam as our guide, this access to information includes things such as a talk with a park ranger who has studied the battle for many years, to a movie that explains the battle complete with maps and reenactments in the park theater.

In our increasing technological age, the old gatekeepers of knowledge are dying fast. Archives are making their holdings accessible online and anyone can search Google or Wikipedia to find a wealth of information about any historical topic. Historic sites and parks are no longer the “go to resource” when trying to find information about that historical place, and I think that’s generally a good thing. But it means that parks can no longer see themselves as the only places to access that information about history. We have to see ourselves as places where you can experience history.

Experiences such as the Antietam Illumination are a start. Depending on the person, each experience will affect them in a different way. For some, the experience of the illumination is enough. Just being there where your ancestor fought, just walking into slave quarters where people lived, or just seeing all the shoes that were left behind by those killed during the holocaust is enough. That experience alone triggers a reaction. It might trigger a sense of meaning. It might trigger a feeling that this place is important, and needs to be preserved. It just makes sense to some people. They get it through experience alone.

What can it all mean? / courtesy of GWNPpublicaffairs

Just as many visitors, though, don’t. The experience isn't enough for them. It is sterile and lacks meaning. It might be because the experience is new and they don’t have anything to fall back on or relate to. It may be because they had no ancestor who fought in the Civil War, or they can’t relate any type of meaning to what their eyes show them, or they may just feel confused and don’t know what to think. They need experience + interaction. One such experience that isn’t just enough for me is the Antietam Illumination. For that experience to mean something, I need to interact with that experience, to think it through, and mull over it. I need to openly talk about it with others. I need to relate what I’m seeing to myself and I need a little help. Does that make the experience worthless? Certainly not. But in order to reach as many as possible, in order to reach people like myself in this case, sites have to offer both experience and interaction together.

This interaction between visitors and their experience already takes place in several different ways. Whether it be attaching makeshift art to a monument’s fence or just talking out loud on a blog about an event you’ve recently experienced (see here and here) both of these are examples of that interaction. They are conversations between the past and the present built upon experiences. The goal now, though, is figuring out how we can foster that experience and interaction for all when they visit our historic sites.