10 Reasons To Visit Gettysburg

I am participating in 31 Days to a Better Blog at Yeah Write. Today's  challenge is to write a list post. Since this weekend is the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, I wanted to look at one of our country's finest historical attractions and why it is such a great place to visit.

1.)  It's family friendly. The various museums, tours and exhibits make it easy for kids to understand the battle. 

2.) Its one of the best preserved battle sites in the country, nearly 6000 acres of  land that is kept as close as possible to the way it was in July of 1863.

3.) The town itself is fun and quirky, with lots of interesting little museums and stores.

 4.) It's easy to get around.  You can walk, take a guided tour, or ride around on the free public transit.  You can also purchase a recorded tour of the battlefield that will guide you in your own car. There are even Segway tours.

 5,) The monuments are cool.  There are hundreds of them, some merely mark the location a group of men stood at, others honor whole states.  Many are moving works of art.

 

 

6. There's lodging for every price range. There are luxury motels, budget motels, and campgrounds.  If you have several families and lots of kids meeting up, the campgrounds are great. 

 

Family reunion

 

On the other hand, when my son and I went, we stayed at a motel right by the battlefield.  We could see the cemetery outside the window.

 

 

 

 

 

7) There are ghosts.  Well they say there are ghosts.  There are tours and a train ride and all sorts of books on the subject.  I am not a psychic person myself, but personally I think that if any place on earth is haunted, it would be Gettysburg.

Boarding the Ghost Train

8) There is plenty of material available to prepare for your trip.  There are books and documentaries and feature films.  If you got out of American History class without reading The Killer Angels, read it. Or watch Gettysburg, the film that was made of the book.  Or Ken Burns' Civil War. Or any of the many writers who treated the battle and the War at even greater length

 

 



9) You can stand where they stood,  There is something extremely moving about standing on Little Round Top or Culp's Hill (the ends of the Union Line) and picture yourself in the shoes of those young men who knew they had to stand their ground or all was lost. 

 

 

 And can one fully appreciate the courage it took for the men in Pickett's command to form a line a mile across and advance in full view against the Union center, without walking their walk?

 

 

And then, upon reaching the other end, to turn around and imagine what the men in blue had seen advancing towards them.

 

 

If you are lucky there will be demonstrations going on when you are there, and you can get a real feel for the noise and smoke and chaos.

 

 

10) You can stand where Lincoln stood, in November of 1863, and made that magnificent speech that in about 200 words defined the country and the war.  You realize that when Lincoln spoke of "These brave men, living and dead" and "The last full measure of devotion" he was looking out at newly dug graves.

 

 

Americans often have a reputation for being ignorant of their history, or unappreciative of the sacrifices made for them.  It's impossible to go to Gettysburg and still be that way.

 











Desert Island Reading

As I have previously noted, there are  a lot of books around the house, and I am always looking for more.  And although I do intend to downsize at some point, it certainly wont be to the radical point of this sort of exercise. And yet its a good thing with any possession to stop and think, occasionally, what objects do I treasure the most and just would not do without.

Exercises of this sort are usually proposed upon the lines of: you're moving to a desert island (or going into space on a long term journey) and packing room is limited. Which 5 books do you choose to take with you? More generous versions (such as the one in the Book of Lists) allow for a small group library with an encyclopedia, a Bible or other religious book, and the complete works of Shakespeare. So will I, if only cause it gives me more flexibility. Series books count as one if they are available in a single volume.

After considerable agonizing I whittled the list down:

1) The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Simply the most important book I have ever read. Why we need myths, what we can learn from them, why diverse cultures throughout history have told the same tales over and over, and so much more is in this book. The interview style makes it more accessible for many people than some of Campbell's work can be, plus its a good one volume summary of most of his writings. For me the book has given my life structure and meaning beyond mundania. The road map of my soul.

2) I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. Thank goodness there is an omnibus edition of  so I didn't have to use 2 choices up on one writer's work. It was hard enough narrowing down from to these 2 from Graves many works of poetry and fiction. But I can't go to the desert island without my dear friend Claudius, which is exactly how one feels about him when these books are finished. Few works of fiction ever brought a time  period and its people more to life.This is one of the works I read at least once a year. For me one of the signs of a good book is that I leave wanting more, and I never finish these books without wishing Graves had more to say about the Imperial Caesars.

3) The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was rough choosing from my many favorite detective writers, but only with Holmes can I get so much: 56 short stories and 4 novels.  Besides being the basic founding work of the genre, Doyle was a great creator of characters and atmosphere. The chemistry between Holmes and Watson has been bettered only once in detective fiction, by Rex Stout. (I couldn't decide on a single book  by him though.) I read Holmes most years too, and he's great company, though I will miss Wolfe and Goodwin and Queen and Alleyn and Father Brown when I get to that island.

4) The Lord of the Rings J R R Tolkien. Although this is available in a single volume (And Tolkien intended it too be a single book, it was the publishers who broke it up) I haven't found a single volume edition that includes The Hobbit so someone needs to get on the ball. I first read this in high school, and spent a pleasant summer reading it aloud to my little sister, and have returned to Middle Earth many times since. Like Harry Potter this is a work I have shared with my children as well, both the books, and the superb films. For all the times I have read it, I always find new things. Like most great epics its actually better once you know how it ends and can relax and observe the journey.

5) This of course is the hardest choice, a 10 way tie at least. The choice is so hard. My favorite work of the last 10 years is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but can I really take just one book from a set without the others? Can I take The Killer Angels without the volumes that bookend it? Trying to narrow down to just one book by David McCullough or William Manchester leaves me longing for the others. Finally I decide to take the mammoth coffee table size The Civil War, the companion volume to the Ken Burns series (not without a pang for Baseball) The text is excellent and the photos extraordinary. Like any great history work, it puts the reader in the time and place of the narrative, but it also raises important questions about what we became out of those events.

So what about you? What books would you take. And for all you Kindle/Nook users out there who are about to say that the infinite capacity of your device renders this little debate meaningless, lets present it this way: What if you could only afford to put 5 books on your device? What would you choose and why?