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Walkabout, Day 2
As I write this, I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to post it today. The internet at the Econolodge just doesn’t work very well, and keeps cutting out (I was forced to stay here after Best Western, Days Inn, and Clarion all regretted to inform me that they didn’t allow pets). Today has been a very weird day, a roller coaster – it started up, crashed in the rain, rose up as I dried, stopped dead when I heard what had happened in Binghamton, and finally looked up again after pizza and ice cream.
I’m going to write this without reference to photos for now – I suspect the internet’s too spotty for me to upload them – but I will try. I’ve already taken a ton (of course…)
I woke up pretty early (okay, at the exact same time I wake up every day, or about 7 AM, and grabbed a quick breakfast. That done, I checked when the Gettysburg National Military Site (or something like that) actually opened, and was surprised and pleased to see that it was already open (it being about ten after 8 at that point). I finished packing, fought some fierce internal debates about a few things, and headed out. The questions were: just how much did I want to walk? And did I want to take the dog? I decided that I wanted to walk a lot, but that I didn’t want to take the dog. She would get too tired if I walked as far as I wanted to – she can’t do 7 or 8 miles.
It was a blustery, over cast morning, and I looked for a parking spot in the shade at the shiny new Visitor’s Center and Museum which only opened last year – but of course couldn’t find one, because all of the trees in the parking lot are only a year or so old. I was holding out hope that, like yesterday, the skies would clear and I’d get a gorgeous day out of it. Jonie would manage…
I had spent breakfast reviewing maps of the routes I wanted to take, and now I discovered that, thanks to the new visitors center in its new location, my plans were for naught, so I grabbed a new map and started my walk. To understand my goal, I should briefly lay out the battle.
Basically speaking, Gettysburg – which is the largest battle fought on American soil, in that more men came to grips than at any other battlefield on the continent – was fought over three days. On the first day, Confederates coming in from the west and north (which is odd, when you think about it…) met dismounted Federal cavalry who were in positions on the northern and western (and to some extent eastern) edges of the city. On this first day, the Federals were vastly outnumbered, and as a result they were pushed back from their positions all the way through the town (there was fighting in the streets) until they finally settled in a new position on a hill on the south eastern edge of the town. That night, reinforcements arrived for everyone concerned, and as daylight dawned the Federals a line that stretched about 4 miles (give or take) in the shape of a fish hook – it started at the hill where they’d retreated to the night before and stretched along Cemetery Ridge all the way to an incredibly rocky pair of hills called Little Round Top and Big Round Top. The Confederates, meanwhile, were on the next ridge to the west, called Seminary Ridge. In between was a long valley which starts out north (close to the city) very wide and slightly rippled, and gets steadily narrower and rockier the farther south it gets, culminating in a narrow and thoroughly inhospitable little area at the base of the two hills.
The Confederates goal was to turn the Union flank, and so they attacked the two ends of the line on the second day – one on Culps Hill (that place the Union had retreated to) and the other primarily on Little Round Top. The fighting was truly vicious, and if you’re interested you can learn more about it by watching Gettysburg, which isn’t half bad, though it’s very long. In the end, despite some very close calls, the Federal position held.
The third day, Lee decided on a new tactic – if the two ends of the Union line had held, then Meade must have weakened his center to reinforce them. Furthermore, Meade would expect the attack on the ends to continue, and would thus still be weak in the center of the line – in the area where the valley was wide and rolling. Thus, Lee decided to punch a hole in the center of the Union line. To do this, he massed 150 artillery pieces and about 15,000 men and told them all to aim for a copse of trees which was just behind the line. This famous charge – Pickett’s Charge – was the bloodiest Confederate repulse of the wall. About a third of the men who started never returned. After this, the Confederates couldn’t risk another attack; they withdrew on the 4th and Meade was too battered to press them. In all, about 150,000 men had fought (90,000 Federals, 60,000 Confederates) and somewhere around 25 ,000 – 30,000 of them were casualties (I might have that number wrong – I can’t remember for sure, and don’t feel like looking it up, though I would if I had internet… ;) )
So there you have it – Gettysburg in a nutshell. My plan was to loop the Day 2 and Day 3 battlefield by starting at Meade’s headquarters (close to the copse of trees) and walk about 2 miles south down Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top with a detour in the Wheat Field and the Peach Orchard (which I didn’t mention above – some idiot Union General advanced too far and got soundly beaten for his trouble, with of course heavy casualties, because heavy casualties are the common thread in every Civil War battle due to the nature of the bullets), and then cross over to the Confederate lines by way of Devil’s Den (which is in that nasty rocky area I talked about…) and walk up Seminary ridge, and finally cut back across to the visitors center. In all, I anticipated that this would be somewhere around 7 or 8 miles.
I should mention before I continue that the current state of Gettysburg is interesting. In the 150 years since the battle, it’s been preserved very much as it was, down to which fields are plowed and which aren’t, with one massive difference: the field is festooned with monuments and plaques – big ones, small ones, simple ones that just state which unit was in which place, to immense ones that you can climb up and look around (okay, only one of those, but still) – monuments to generals, to random civilians, (this was the monument that I thought was to a civilian; turns out it's not, oh well), to units and bridges and regiments, from every state in the Union and Confederacy.
Everything started peachy keen, until I got to the very first monument outside on the edge of the National Park – when the first drops of rain started to fall. I wandered down the roads (criss crossing all over the place to take pictures of monuments – I want to talk about this more, I’ll get to it below) admiring the monuments, picturing the battle, trying to imagine what it might have been like, and the rain came and went, but by the time I was approaching the Wheat Field, it had pretty much decided to come, and though I tried to press on, it was soon coming down heavily enough that I realized that the game was up, and while I might not care about getting drenched, my purse, my camera, and shoes didn’t appreciate it. In particular, though, the straw that broke the back was when I couldn’t wear my glasses any longer. As I headed back, I realized it had gotten colder, too – so as fast as I could, I made my increasingly unhappy (and thoroughly wet) way back to the Visitor’s Center – in all it took about half an hour, which means I’d gone something around 4 miles since I started – probably more, since I went much more directly on the way back. By then, I’d reached the thoroughly wet stage – you know that moment when you’re out in the rain and you realize it’s made it to your underwear? Yeah…on the plus side, care use of my coat had kept my purse almost dry, and my camera is none the worse for wear, thank god. (just what I need, to destroy ANOTHER camera… ;) )
I ducked into the car, grabbed a change of clothes (or rather, clean shirt, dry pants, dry socks – I only have one pair of shoes and only one bra with me, so those would have to be wet, and I didn’t want to change underwear…) and changed in the bathroom. It started to pour right before I got back only to clear a minute or two before I got to my car, which was like the final straw – it only rained when I wanted to be out on the battlefield, what the hell? Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased.
Though it was only 10:30 AM, I’d already spent a great deal of the morning reflecting on two themes that seemed to relate fundamentally to every thing that had happened.
1. Stubbornness. I am a stubborn person. I’ve known this for a long time, and generally, I don’t consider it to be a bad thing. Sure, it can cause problems, but in most cases it substitutes very well for patience, which I don’t have. The negative side, of course, it that it can make me downright mulish if I think I’m right, and I do mean THINK – it has nothing whatsoever to do with being actually right, which I’m often able to acknowledge, if only after the fact. Indeed, one of the struggles I’ve gone through in the past year has been tempering that stubbornness so that I can learn to back down when I’m wrong, acknowledge when I don’t actually know what the hell I’m talking about (more often than I like to admit) and apologize when I’ve let it get out of hand. Meanwhile, I’ve tried to cultivate the other aspects: stubborn gets my entire apartment packed for the exterminators when stamina, perseverance, and patience have long since given up in despair. Stubborn gets that one more edit run done when I know I don’t really want to and don’t really need to but really should. Stubborn gets me to work every day even when I don’t have an office and therefore no one to force me to. Basically, stubborn couples with persistence, dedication, and some other more positive traits to get shit done. I don’t want to not be stubborn. But this morning revealed just how much of a problem stubborn can be. I spent 13 hours in wet shoes because of stubborn (and will probably spend more tomorrow). I actually considered walking all the way to Little Round Top, because of stubborn. If I had turned back earlier, I’d have missed nothing that I wanted to see (see below) but wouldn’t have spent the morning getting sopping wet in a cold, blustery morning, risking destroying my cell phone and camera, and of course taking the chance that I’d get sick again – I’ve only been better for a week. My coat was protecting my purse, which means I was wearing nothing but a t-shirt, and if it was above 50 degrees I’d be surprised. I mean, when I got back to my car, my fingers were so stiff with cold and chill that I could hardly undo the knots that held my jacket around my waist. Sure, stubborn got me through packing – but stubborn also got me that. I think I’ve made a lot of progress on stubborn, but today proved I’ve still got a long way to go – and that I can’t keep making the mistake of thinking that stubborn is good.
2. Invisibility. Today, a well dressed, healthy, young woman (that would be me) wandered around in the rain for 90 minutes. She was passed by no less than a dozen cars (probably more like twice that) and not a single person so much as paused to see if I was okay. This has NEVER happened to me before. I’ve been caught in the rain before (during the summer in Bloomington when I didn’t have a car and walked everywhere) and without fail someone would offer me a ride. Now, I like walking in the rain and don’t want to damage any one’s upholstery, so I always said no, but that’s not the point. As anyone who has been a relationship knows, sometimes it’s not about the answer to the question, it’s about taking the time to ask it. (“Honey are you okay?” can go a long way when honey is down, even if honey shrugs it off and says he/she is fine, as I think we all know). I’ve never felt so invisible in my life, not even when I lived in Japan and experienced (though only subtly) the unspoken racism that accompanied being a white woman there. Cars would slow down to avoid me, but otherwise it was like I wasn’t there. This was amplified when I returned to the Visitor’s Center. I walked in dripping wet, hair, shirt, everything soaked absolutely through, and far from anyone saying anything, it didn’t even seem like anyone noticed. I didn’t even elicit second glances. It was utterly bizarre and, I think, what turned my tromp through the rain from being bothersome to being actually upsetting. Because something about the whole thing made me feel like I didn’t even exist (though Jonie’s reaction to my return to the car helped. ;) ). I still don’t really know what to make of this feeling, but I definitely need to think about it more.
But I was HERE, dammit, and I wasn’t out of options: they had a film in the Visitor’s Center (narrated by Morgan Freeman, and with Sam Waterson (sp?) voicing Abraham Lincoln, which made me think of McCoy in a whole new way…) and the Cyclorama, and a museum – I’d seen the Cyclorama before when it was in its old home, but the rest was new, and I didn’t remember the Cyclorama anyway.
For that matter, I didn’t remember much about the battlefield at all. I became interested in the Civil War sometime between when I was 5 and 10 – in part due to the truly awesome Ken Burns documentary, and in large part because my father is a Civil War buff. Between when I was about 10 and 15, he and I went to a bunch of battlefields – including Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. (Oddly, I’ve only driven through Bull Run…) I remember some better than others – I remembered Fredericksburg very well, and Wilderness, too (Wilderness is hard to forget – but I’ll talk about that tomorrow, because I decided that I’d go there and Chancellorsville Sunday – the two battlefields overlap). Gettysburg, though, I hardly remembered at all – I recalled Little Round Top quite well (Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who is one of the heroes of the battle and who was in command of the 20th Maine, one of the regiments stationed on the hill, is a personal hero of mine, so of course I remembered where he was well…) and I remembered that someplace or other there was a monument dedicated to John Reynolds, a Union general who was shot and killed on the first day of the battle, but other than that, I couldn’t have told you much about it (other than what I know about it historically speaking, which granted is a lot, it’s the battle I’m most familiar with). So it was odd to walk around on it again – because a lot of it I didn’t remember even when I saw it again.
Anyway, back to the museum. In addition to the things to do inside, there was also the way most normal people see the battlefield – the auto tour. I was loath to do it even though it’s such a large area, it just felt so…ordinary…but it was an option, too, if the weather didn’t clear.
The film was fascinating. First, it skewed the whole conflict to be about slavery. Second, I couldn’t wrap my head around McCoy as the president. Third…I don’t know, there was just something about it that was weird. I guess it was mostly the slavery emphasis – it cast the entire Civil War as being a conflict about freedom (the film was called “A New Birth of Freedom”) and I just don’t know if I can agree with that. However, that wasn’t what made the biggest impression on me. What did was McCoy, reading the Gettysburg Address. I’ve talked before about the Address – it reduces me to tears if I hear or read the whole thing – but this was only part of it. The last line of the Address is “…so that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” (I might have mixed up the “of” “by” and “for.”) I’ve always read this as “…government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people,” with the emphasis being on what the people are doing, how they influence. That’s not how McCoy read it, though – he read it as “of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE.” I’m really glad he did – because I never thought of it that way, and somehow hearing it done with a different emphasis changes the entire feel of the line. Now it’s not about what the people are doing, what matters is that the people are the ones doing it. I feel like I understand it better now that I can think of it both ways.
The Cyclorama, for the record, is an immense (like, 500 foot long and 42 foot tall) painting done in the round of the battle during Pickett’s Charge. The party line is that, at its unveiling in the 1880s, veterans found it so realistic that they wept. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is pretty awesome. The new installation features a narration and light show that make it even more effective, starting with a glow of dawn, and including very startling explosions. It worked surprisingly well. Also, it’s just a neat painting.
From there, I wandered through the museum. By this point, my bra and panties were mostly dry, I’d joked with a couple of employees, and was starting to feel better about life again. The museum was interesting if not particularly noteworthy – it’s collections weren’t near as impressive as the one in Harrisburg, though they had a far greater number of items that were interesting by association, including a hat that belonged to Sherman (who wasn’t anywhere near Gettysburg, so I don’t know what it had to do with anything, but whatever) and a large number of uniforms, which I always like to see. From there, I wandered through the gift shop which was swarming with obnoxious children, grabbed a shot glass and a cookbook of apple recipes, and then went to eat. The food wasn’t very good (and was expensive – double lose) and Jonie was waiting (it was nearly 1 by this point). The rain was still drizzly, but things looked a bit better.
My stubbornness subdued, I conceded defeat and decided that if I wanted to get through the battlefield, it would have to be the auto tour. I did my best to memorize the route (which proved pointless since it’s thoroughly signed throughout the area) and went on my way.
First stop was the Soldier’s National Cemetery, where I don’t think I’d ever been. This is where, in November, 1863, Lincoln read the Gettysburg Address – it was his speech at the dedication ceremony. It’s a nice little cemetery but it somehow lacked the sense of eerie timelessness that I associate with a truly “successful” – by which I guess I mean evocative – graveyard.
From there, I headed through town to the areas north and west where the first day’s fighting took place, and then all the way down the Confederate line. I was snapping pictures the whole way but confronting a serious problem: after three days of hardcore sightseeing and photography, my memory card was full. I kept having to go back and delete the crappy ones, and it made everything take longer. I wish I could have exhaustively photographed the monuments, they’re so interesting in all their shapes and sizes.
I find public monuments and memorials to be absolutely fascinating. I think that the ways that we choose to commemorate history have an important influence on how we perceive history, and I think that what actions we and our ancestors think are worthy of note also says a lot. I’d love to learn more about the history of the Gettysburg monuments (there are a few books about it) just because they come in so many shapes and sizes. The Union line has them as thick as flies (seriously, I’ll try to post one of the pictures), with the grandest and largest being the one dedicated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; with 8 full-sized statues of important figures (like Meade, Reynolds, and Lincoln), it boasts an avenging angel on top of a three (or so) story dome, all built on an immense platform; the outside of the platform lists a vast number of Pennsylvanians – at a guess, I’d say it’s all the Pennsylvanians who fought at Gettysburg, arranged by regiment – failing that, it might have only been the officers – but I think it was everyone. The thing has a viewing level and everything. It’s immense. At the extreme other end are the pedestals which are every where; they’re just little square stones, maybe a foot tall, all identical, and they simply state where every single unit was. On the Union side, several states have erected monuments like the Pennsylvania one, but mostly the monuments are by regiment, and there are vast numbers of them.
On the Confederate side, though, it’s a very different story. Aside from the pedestals and the official plaques (mounted by the government instead of by donation) there are hardly any monuments – pretty much just one by each state. They’re also very different from the Union ones – which are typically slabs of stone, sometimes with a relief or a statue but often not. The Confederate ones almost all featured elaborate sculptures, typically very evocative ones. I feel like this says something significant about the difference between the two sides, if only I could put my finger on it. Sentiment, after all, has played a critical role in the development of the myth of “the Lost Cause,” and these sculptures really draw on that. And standing there, looking out over the field where Pickett charged, you can see why sentiment is drawn on – if ever there was a helpless cause, it was looking out over the field at Fredericksburg below Marye’s Heights which the Federals tried to charge repeatedly. But if there are two helpless causes, this was the other – a mile-long charge over exposed fields leading up to a hill where the Union is entrenched. What on earth were they thinking?
The last thing about the monuments that’s fascinating is their placement. For the most part, they line the roads along the battlefield. Unlike some other battlefields (like Fredericksburg) this area didn’t get more built up after the war (for the most part) – it was a monument pretty much from the beginning. I think that’s why there are so many memorials here. Other battlefields? Not at all like this. But Gettysburg itself became a monument to everything that the war stood for: the loss of lives, the suffering of the civilians, the cost, the incredibly unthinkable cost that was being paid by both sides. The creation of the National Cemetery certainly solidified this, and as a result it became a point of pride, I’m sure, to mount a monument here. As far as I can tell, most were mounted in the late 19th century (though some are more recent – some were clearly early 20th century, and the statue of Longstreet was erected in 1998). But some of the earlier ones aren’t along the road – or even along the paths. And I think that this is not because that was just the place they belonged, but because they were placed at a time before the “official” path was decided – which means that they’re now orphaned, some out of the way, others well-nigh inaccessible. It makes for odd viewing.
By the time I finished the Confederate line, I was feeling pretty beat, and it was about 3:30 – I did a lot of parking and walking and taking pictures despite being on the auto tour. Also, the camera situation was becoming critical, I was running out of things to delete. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without seeing Little Round Top. And once I got there, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without seeing Devil’s Den. And the Peach Orchard. And I’d wanted to get to Culp’s Hill since the beginning. Meanwhile, I was getting increasingly puzzled – I KNEW there was a monument to John Reynolds somewhere, but where the heck was it? It should have been over by the first day stuff, since that’s when he died, but I hadn’t seen it. So I couldn’t stop without finding it, of course…but the rain was starting to fall again. I started to not get out of the car (snapping pictures from inside, since obviously I wasn’t going to stop taking pictures. ;) ) and sure enough, despite thinking I was completely out of energy, I made it to every place. And when I descended Culp’s Hill…I STILL hadn’t found Reynolds. The game was up. There are random monuments in all kinds of weird places in Gettysburg, and there was no way I was going to hunt out that particular one. So I headed to Route 30 to make my way to Hagerstown, my next stop – in that it’s the closest town with chain hotels to Antietam.
And as I drove west out of town, I passed a cluster of monuments, and there, astride his horse, was John Reynolds.
I was about half way to Hagerstown when I called mom, and she told me about what had happened in Binghamton. As most of you reading this probably know, I’m a SUNY B graduate, and I lived in Binghamton for four of the five years I was there (my freshman year I lived in Vestal, because by an amusing oddity caused by the way towns grew together in the area, SUNY Binghamton is actually located in Vestal – Binghamton is also called the tri cities, for Vestal, Binghamton, and Johnson City, but in reality is made up an indistinguishable conglomerate of more than 5 cities – adding Port Dickinson, Endicott, and Endwell). Anyway, the point is, I know Binghamton. This massacres happen sometimes, but I NEVER would have pegged Binghamton as the place for one. Sure, it’s got tons of problems. It’s not a college town (it has over 200k people and the university only serves about 10k students, definitely not a college town) and is in a very poor area, but it just didn’t seem like the place. Furthermore, she said that it was “across the street” from where [Bad username or site: ”mistress_sin” @ livejournal.com] used to work, and that meant that it happened right in Binghamton (actual Binghamton, not Vestal or Endicott or what not) down town – that neighborhood surrounds the courthouse. I was pretty upset, but I didn’t learn more details until I arrived at the hotel, where CNN was reciting the latest – and showing pictures. That was, I think, what pushed me over the edge. I recognize that building. I’ve walked by that building, and driven past that building, dozens of times – it’s only a couple of blocks from Greyhound and Shortline, my tickets home back before I had a license. And the lady translator is a BCC professor – Kev is a BCC professor! I mean, the only thing that came closer to home was 9/11 – and I never wanted anything to hit that close to home ever again. Not that this was as bad – if only by scale – and I’m not nearly as upset as I was then (for obvious reasons, I should think).
Yet the flip side is, WHY am I upset? What, cosmically speaking, does this have to do with me? Certainly I entertain no thought that I “might have been there” – because I never would have been. As people, I think we tend to associate with tragedy that takes place with perceived proximity to us. Not actual proximity, though. How, really, does this relate to my life at all? What is upsetting about it?
I have absolutely no idea.
But there it is. I am upset. And somehow, it feels like I aughta be. Or maybe it’s just that I feel…significant?...by association? I’m not sure.
I am sure, though, that it feels mighty weird to realize that Binghamton may now become a household name like Columbine is, for the same horrible reasons (okay, not quite the same, but similar).
Well, I wrote a ton, but it was that kind of day – lots of running around, lots of happenings, and lots and lots of thinking. Now, let’s see if I can get this internet to work at all….
(yes! now to see if I can get some pics up... ;) I don't have high hopes, though...)
I’m going to write this without reference to photos for now – I suspect the internet’s too spotty for me to upload them – but I will try. I’ve already taken a ton (of course…)
I woke up pretty early (okay, at the exact same time I wake up every day, or about 7 AM, and grabbed a quick breakfast. That done, I checked when the Gettysburg National Military Site (or something like that) actually opened, and was surprised and pleased to see that it was already open (it being about ten after 8 at that point). I finished packing, fought some fierce internal debates about a few things, and headed out. The questions were: just how much did I want to walk? And did I want to take the dog? I decided that I wanted to walk a lot, but that I didn’t want to take the dog. She would get too tired if I walked as far as I wanted to – she can’t do 7 or 8 miles.
It was a blustery, over cast morning, and I looked for a parking spot in the shade at the shiny new Visitor’s Center and Museum which only opened last year – but of course couldn’t find one, because all of the trees in the parking lot are only a year or so old. I was holding out hope that, like yesterday, the skies would clear and I’d get a gorgeous day out of it. Jonie would manage…
I had spent breakfast reviewing maps of the routes I wanted to take, and now I discovered that, thanks to the new visitors center in its new location, my plans were for naught, so I grabbed a new map and started my walk. To understand my goal, I should briefly lay out the battle.
Basically speaking, Gettysburg – which is the largest battle fought on American soil, in that more men came to grips than at any other battlefield on the continent – was fought over three days. On the first day, Confederates coming in from the west and north (which is odd, when you think about it…) met dismounted Federal cavalry who were in positions on the northern and western (and to some extent eastern) edges of the city. On this first day, the Federals were vastly outnumbered, and as a result they were pushed back from their positions all the way through the town (there was fighting in the streets) until they finally settled in a new position on a hill on the south eastern edge of the town. That night, reinforcements arrived for everyone concerned, and as daylight dawned the Federals a line that stretched about 4 miles (give or take) in the shape of a fish hook – it started at the hill where they’d retreated to the night before and stretched along Cemetery Ridge all the way to an incredibly rocky pair of hills called Little Round Top and Big Round Top. The Confederates, meanwhile, were on the next ridge to the west, called Seminary Ridge. In between was a long valley which starts out north (close to the city) very wide and slightly rippled, and gets steadily narrower and rockier the farther south it gets, culminating in a narrow and thoroughly inhospitable little area at the base of the two hills.
The Confederates goal was to turn the Union flank, and so they attacked the two ends of the line on the second day – one on Culps Hill (that place the Union had retreated to) and the other primarily on Little Round Top. The fighting was truly vicious, and if you’re interested you can learn more about it by watching Gettysburg, which isn’t half bad, though it’s very long. In the end, despite some very close calls, the Federal position held.
The third day, Lee decided on a new tactic – if the two ends of the Union line had held, then Meade must have weakened his center to reinforce them. Furthermore, Meade would expect the attack on the ends to continue, and would thus still be weak in the center of the line – in the area where the valley was wide and rolling. Thus, Lee decided to punch a hole in the center of the Union line. To do this, he massed 150 artillery pieces and about 15,000 men and told them all to aim for a copse of trees which was just behind the line. This famous charge – Pickett’s Charge – was the bloodiest Confederate repulse of the wall. About a third of the men who started never returned. After this, the Confederates couldn’t risk another attack; they withdrew on the 4th and Meade was too battered to press them. In all, about 150,000 men had fought (90,000 Federals, 60,000 Confederates) and somewhere around 25 ,000 – 30,000 of them were casualties (I might have that number wrong – I can’t remember for sure, and don’t feel like looking it up, though I would if I had internet… ;) )
So there you have it – Gettysburg in a nutshell. My plan was to loop the Day 2 and Day 3 battlefield by starting at Meade’s headquarters (close to the copse of trees) and walk about 2 miles south down Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top with a detour in the Wheat Field and the Peach Orchard (which I didn’t mention above – some idiot Union General advanced too far and got soundly beaten for his trouble, with of course heavy casualties, because heavy casualties are the common thread in every Civil War battle due to the nature of the bullets), and then cross over to the Confederate lines by way of Devil’s Den (which is in that nasty rocky area I talked about…) and walk up Seminary ridge, and finally cut back across to the visitors center. In all, I anticipated that this would be somewhere around 7 or 8 miles.
I should mention before I continue that the current state of Gettysburg is interesting. In the 150 years since the battle, it’s been preserved very much as it was, down to which fields are plowed and which aren’t, with one massive difference: the field is festooned with monuments and plaques – big ones, small ones, simple ones that just state which unit was in which place, to immense ones that you can climb up and look around (okay, only one of those, but still) – monuments to generals, to random civilians, (this was the monument that I thought was to a civilian; turns out it's not, oh well), to units and bridges and regiments, from every state in the Union and Confederacy.
Everything started peachy keen, until I got to the very first monument outside on the edge of the National Park – when the first drops of rain started to fall. I wandered down the roads (criss crossing all over the place to take pictures of monuments – I want to talk about this more, I’ll get to it below) admiring the monuments, picturing the battle, trying to imagine what it might have been like, and the rain came and went, but by the time I was approaching the Wheat Field, it had pretty much decided to come, and though I tried to press on, it was soon coming down heavily enough that I realized that the game was up, and while I might not care about getting drenched, my purse, my camera, and shoes didn’t appreciate it. In particular, though, the straw that broke the back was when I couldn’t wear my glasses any longer. As I headed back, I realized it had gotten colder, too – so as fast as I could, I made my increasingly unhappy (and thoroughly wet) way back to the Visitor’s Center – in all it took about half an hour, which means I’d gone something around 4 miles since I started – probably more, since I went much more directly on the way back. By then, I’d reached the thoroughly wet stage – you know that moment when you’re out in the rain and you realize it’s made it to your underwear? Yeah…on the plus side, care use of my coat had kept my purse almost dry, and my camera is none the worse for wear, thank god. (just what I need, to destroy ANOTHER camera… ;) )
I ducked into the car, grabbed a change of clothes (or rather, clean shirt, dry pants, dry socks – I only have one pair of shoes and only one bra with me, so those would have to be wet, and I didn’t want to change underwear…) and changed in the bathroom. It started to pour right before I got back only to clear a minute or two before I got to my car, which was like the final straw – it only rained when I wanted to be out on the battlefield, what the hell? Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased.
Though it was only 10:30 AM, I’d already spent a great deal of the morning reflecting on two themes that seemed to relate fundamentally to every thing that had happened.
1. Stubbornness. I am a stubborn person. I’ve known this for a long time, and generally, I don’t consider it to be a bad thing. Sure, it can cause problems, but in most cases it substitutes very well for patience, which I don’t have. The negative side, of course, it that it can make me downright mulish if I think I’m right, and I do mean THINK – it has nothing whatsoever to do with being actually right, which I’m often able to acknowledge, if only after the fact. Indeed, one of the struggles I’ve gone through in the past year has been tempering that stubbornness so that I can learn to back down when I’m wrong, acknowledge when I don’t actually know what the hell I’m talking about (more often than I like to admit) and apologize when I’ve let it get out of hand. Meanwhile, I’ve tried to cultivate the other aspects: stubborn gets my entire apartment packed for the exterminators when stamina, perseverance, and patience have long since given up in despair. Stubborn gets that one more edit run done when I know I don’t really want to and don’t really need to but really should. Stubborn gets me to work every day even when I don’t have an office and therefore no one to force me to. Basically, stubborn couples with persistence, dedication, and some other more positive traits to get shit done. I don’t want to not be stubborn. But this morning revealed just how much of a problem stubborn can be. I spent 13 hours in wet shoes because of stubborn (and will probably spend more tomorrow). I actually considered walking all the way to Little Round Top, because of stubborn. If I had turned back earlier, I’d have missed nothing that I wanted to see (see below) but wouldn’t have spent the morning getting sopping wet in a cold, blustery morning, risking destroying my cell phone and camera, and of course taking the chance that I’d get sick again – I’ve only been better for a week. My coat was protecting my purse, which means I was wearing nothing but a t-shirt, and if it was above 50 degrees I’d be surprised. I mean, when I got back to my car, my fingers were so stiff with cold and chill that I could hardly undo the knots that held my jacket around my waist. Sure, stubborn got me through packing – but stubborn also got me that. I think I’ve made a lot of progress on stubborn, but today proved I’ve still got a long way to go – and that I can’t keep making the mistake of thinking that stubborn is good.
2. Invisibility. Today, a well dressed, healthy, young woman (that would be me) wandered around in the rain for 90 minutes. She was passed by no less than a dozen cars (probably more like twice that) and not a single person so much as paused to see if I was okay. This has NEVER happened to me before. I’ve been caught in the rain before (during the summer in Bloomington when I didn’t have a car and walked everywhere) and without fail someone would offer me a ride. Now, I like walking in the rain and don’t want to damage any one’s upholstery, so I always said no, but that’s not the point. As anyone who has been a relationship knows, sometimes it’s not about the answer to the question, it’s about taking the time to ask it. (“Honey are you okay?” can go a long way when honey is down, even if honey shrugs it off and says he/she is fine, as I think we all know). I’ve never felt so invisible in my life, not even when I lived in Japan and experienced (though only subtly) the unspoken racism that accompanied being a white woman there. Cars would slow down to avoid me, but otherwise it was like I wasn’t there. This was amplified when I returned to the Visitor’s Center. I walked in dripping wet, hair, shirt, everything soaked absolutely through, and far from anyone saying anything, it didn’t even seem like anyone noticed. I didn’t even elicit second glances. It was utterly bizarre and, I think, what turned my tromp through the rain from being bothersome to being actually upsetting. Because something about the whole thing made me feel like I didn’t even exist (though Jonie’s reaction to my return to the car helped. ;) ). I still don’t really know what to make of this feeling, but I definitely need to think about it more.
But I was HERE, dammit, and I wasn’t out of options: they had a film in the Visitor’s Center (narrated by Morgan Freeman, and with Sam Waterson (sp?) voicing Abraham Lincoln, which made me think of McCoy in a whole new way…) and the Cyclorama, and a museum – I’d seen the Cyclorama before when it was in its old home, but the rest was new, and I didn’t remember the Cyclorama anyway.
For that matter, I didn’t remember much about the battlefield at all. I became interested in the Civil War sometime between when I was 5 and 10 – in part due to the truly awesome Ken Burns documentary, and in large part because my father is a Civil War buff. Between when I was about 10 and 15, he and I went to a bunch of battlefields – including Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. (Oddly, I’ve only driven through Bull Run…) I remember some better than others – I remembered Fredericksburg very well, and Wilderness, too (Wilderness is hard to forget – but I’ll talk about that tomorrow, because I decided that I’d go there and Chancellorsville Sunday – the two battlefields overlap). Gettysburg, though, I hardly remembered at all – I recalled Little Round Top quite well (Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who is one of the heroes of the battle and who was in command of the 20th Maine, one of the regiments stationed on the hill, is a personal hero of mine, so of course I remembered where he was well…) and I remembered that someplace or other there was a monument dedicated to John Reynolds, a Union general who was shot and killed on the first day of the battle, but other than that, I couldn’t have told you much about it (other than what I know about it historically speaking, which granted is a lot, it’s the battle I’m most familiar with). So it was odd to walk around on it again – because a lot of it I didn’t remember even when I saw it again.
Anyway, back to the museum. In addition to the things to do inside, there was also the way most normal people see the battlefield – the auto tour. I was loath to do it even though it’s such a large area, it just felt so…ordinary…but it was an option, too, if the weather didn’t clear.
The film was fascinating. First, it skewed the whole conflict to be about slavery. Second, I couldn’t wrap my head around McCoy as the president. Third…I don’t know, there was just something about it that was weird. I guess it was mostly the slavery emphasis – it cast the entire Civil War as being a conflict about freedom (the film was called “A New Birth of Freedom”) and I just don’t know if I can agree with that. However, that wasn’t what made the biggest impression on me. What did was McCoy, reading the Gettysburg Address. I’ve talked before about the Address – it reduces me to tears if I hear or read the whole thing – but this was only part of it. The last line of the Address is “…so that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” (I might have mixed up the “of” “by” and “for.”) I’ve always read this as “…government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people,” with the emphasis being on what the people are doing, how they influence. That’s not how McCoy read it, though – he read it as “of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE.” I’m really glad he did – because I never thought of it that way, and somehow hearing it done with a different emphasis changes the entire feel of the line. Now it’s not about what the people are doing, what matters is that the people are the ones doing it. I feel like I understand it better now that I can think of it both ways.
The Cyclorama, for the record, is an immense (like, 500 foot long and 42 foot tall) painting done in the round of the battle during Pickett’s Charge. The party line is that, at its unveiling in the 1880s, veterans found it so realistic that they wept. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is pretty awesome. The new installation features a narration and light show that make it even more effective, starting with a glow of dawn, and including very startling explosions. It worked surprisingly well. Also, it’s just a neat painting.
From there, I wandered through the museum. By this point, my bra and panties were mostly dry, I’d joked with a couple of employees, and was starting to feel better about life again. The museum was interesting if not particularly noteworthy – it’s collections weren’t near as impressive as the one in Harrisburg, though they had a far greater number of items that were interesting by association, including a hat that belonged to Sherman (who wasn’t anywhere near Gettysburg, so I don’t know what it had to do with anything, but whatever) and a large number of uniforms, which I always like to see. From there, I wandered through the gift shop which was swarming with obnoxious children, grabbed a shot glass and a cookbook of apple recipes, and then went to eat. The food wasn’t very good (and was expensive – double lose) and Jonie was waiting (it was nearly 1 by this point). The rain was still drizzly, but things looked a bit better.
My stubbornness subdued, I conceded defeat and decided that if I wanted to get through the battlefield, it would have to be the auto tour. I did my best to memorize the route (which proved pointless since it’s thoroughly signed throughout the area) and went on my way.
First stop was the Soldier’s National Cemetery, where I don’t think I’d ever been. This is where, in November, 1863, Lincoln read the Gettysburg Address – it was his speech at the dedication ceremony. It’s a nice little cemetery but it somehow lacked the sense of eerie timelessness that I associate with a truly “successful” – by which I guess I mean evocative – graveyard.
From there, I headed through town to the areas north and west where the first day’s fighting took place, and then all the way down the Confederate line. I was snapping pictures the whole way but confronting a serious problem: after three days of hardcore sightseeing and photography, my memory card was full. I kept having to go back and delete the crappy ones, and it made everything take longer. I wish I could have exhaustively photographed the monuments, they’re so interesting in all their shapes and sizes.
I find public monuments and memorials to be absolutely fascinating. I think that the ways that we choose to commemorate history have an important influence on how we perceive history, and I think that what actions we and our ancestors think are worthy of note also says a lot. I’d love to learn more about the history of the Gettysburg monuments (there are a few books about it) just because they come in so many shapes and sizes. The Union line has them as thick as flies (seriously, I’ll try to post one of the pictures), with the grandest and largest being the one dedicated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; with 8 full-sized statues of important figures (like Meade, Reynolds, and Lincoln), it boasts an avenging angel on top of a three (or so) story dome, all built on an immense platform; the outside of the platform lists a vast number of Pennsylvanians – at a guess, I’d say it’s all the Pennsylvanians who fought at Gettysburg, arranged by regiment – failing that, it might have only been the officers – but I think it was everyone. The thing has a viewing level and everything. It’s immense. At the extreme other end are the pedestals which are every where; they’re just little square stones, maybe a foot tall, all identical, and they simply state where every single unit was. On the Union side, several states have erected monuments like the Pennsylvania one, but mostly the monuments are by regiment, and there are vast numbers of them.
On the Confederate side, though, it’s a very different story. Aside from the pedestals and the official plaques (mounted by the government instead of by donation) there are hardly any monuments – pretty much just one by each state. They’re also very different from the Union ones – which are typically slabs of stone, sometimes with a relief or a statue but often not. The Confederate ones almost all featured elaborate sculptures, typically very evocative ones. I feel like this says something significant about the difference between the two sides, if only I could put my finger on it. Sentiment, after all, has played a critical role in the development of the myth of “the Lost Cause,” and these sculptures really draw on that. And standing there, looking out over the field where Pickett charged, you can see why sentiment is drawn on – if ever there was a helpless cause, it was looking out over the field at Fredericksburg below Marye’s Heights which the Federals tried to charge repeatedly. But if there are two helpless causes, this was the other – a mile-long charge over exposed fields leading up to a hill where the Union is entrenched. What on earth were they thinking?
The last thing about the monuments that’s fascinating is their placement. For the most part, they line the roads along the battlefield. Unlike some other battlefields (like Fredericksburg) this area didn’t get more built up after the war (for the most part) – it was a monument pretty much from the beginning. I think that’s why there are so many memorials here. Other battlefields? Not at all like this. But Gettysburg itself became a monument to everything that the war stood for: the loss of lives, the suffering of the civilians, the cost, the incredibly unthinkable cost that was being paid by both sides. The creation of the National Cemetery certainly solidified this, and as a result it became a point of pride, I’m sure, to mount a monument here. As far as I can tell, most were mounted in the late 19th century (though some are more recent – some were clearly early 20th century, and the statue of Longstreet was erected in 1998). But some of the earlier ones aren’t along the road – or even along the paths. And I think that this is not because that was just the place they belonged, but because they were placed at a time before the “official” path was decided – which means that they’re now orphaned, some out of the way, others well-nigh inaccessible. It makes for odd viewing.
By the time I finished the Confederate line, I was feeling pretty beat, and it was about 3:30 – I did a lot of parking and walking and taking pictures despite being on the auto tour. Also, the camera situation was becoming critical, I was running out of things to delete. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without seeing Little Round Top. And once I got there, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without seeing Devil’s Den. And the Peach Orchard. And I’d wanted to get to Culp’s Hill since the beginning. Meanwhile, I was getting increasingly puzzled – I KNEW there was a monument to John Reynolds somewhere, but where the heck was it? It should have been over by the first day stuff, since that’s when he died, but I hadn’t seen it. So I couldn’t stop without finding it, of course…but the rain was starting to fall again. I started to not get out of the car (snapping pictures from inside, since obviously I wasn’t going to stop taking pictures. ;) ) and sure enough, despite thinking I was completely out of energy, I made it to every place. And when I descended Culp’s Hill…I STILL hadn’t found Reynolds. The game was up. There are random monuments in all kinds of weird places in Gettysburg, and there was no way I was going to hunt out that particular one. So I headed to Route 30 to make my way to Hagerstown, my next stop – in that it’s the closest town with chain hotels to Antietam.
And as I drove west out of town, I passed a cluster of monuments, and there, astride his horse, was John Reynolds.
I was about half way to Hagerstown when I called mom, and she told me about what had happened in Binghamton. As most of you reading this probably know, I’m a SUNY B graduate, and I lived in Binghamton for four of the five years I was there (my freshman year I lived in Vestal, because by an amusing oddity caused by the way towns grew together in the area, SUNY Binghamton is actually located in Vestal – Binghamton is also called the tri cities, for Vestal, Binghamton, and Johnson City, but in reality is made up an indistinguishable conglomerate of more than 5 cities – adding Port Dickinson, Endicott, and Endwell). Anyway, the point is, I know Binghamton. This massacres happen sometimes, but I NEVER would have pegged Binghamton as the place for one. Sure, it’s got tons of problems. It’s not a college town (it has over 200k people and the university only serves about 10k students, definitely not a college town) and is in a very poor area, but it just didn’t seem like the place. Furthermore, she said that it was “across the street” from where [Bad username or site: ”mistress_sin” @ livejournal.com] used to work, and that meant that it happened right in Binghamton (actual Binghamton, not Vestal or Endicott or what not) down town – that neighborhood surrounds the courthouse. I was pretty upset, but I didn’t learn more details until I arrived at the hotel, where CNN was reciting the latest – and showing pictures. That was, I think, what pushed me over the edge. I recognize that building. I’ve walked by that building, and driven past that building, dozens of times – it’s only a couple of blocks from Greyhound and Shortline, my tickets home back before I had a license. And the lady translator is a BCC professor – Kev is a BCC professor! I mean, the only thing that came closer to home was 9/11 – and I never wanted anything to hit that close to home ever again. Not that this was as bad – if only by scale – and I’m not nearly as upset as I was then (for obvious reasons, I should think).
Yet the flip side is, WHY am I upset? What, cosmically speaking, does this have to do with me? Certainly I entertain no thought that I “might have been there” – because I never would have been. As people, I think we tend to associate with tragedy that takes place with perceived proximity to us. Not actual proximity, though. How, really, does this relate to my life at all? What is upsetting about it?
I have absolutely no idea.
But there it is. I am upset. And somehow, it feels like I aughta be. Or maybe it’s just that I feel…significant?...by association? I’m not sure.
I am sure, though, that it feels mighty weird to realize that Binghamton may now become a household name like Columbine is, for the same horrible reasons (okay, not quite the same, but similar).
Well, I wrote a ton, but it was that kind of day – lots of running around, lots of happenings, and lots and lots of thinking. Now, let’s see if I can get this internet to work at all….
(yes! now to see if I can get some pics up... ;) I don't have high hopes, though...)
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But I did want to comment on you walking in the rain and no one offering a ride. No one can trust anyone anymore - anyone could be a threat. In between Santa Rosa and Lakeport, California (where I'm currently living) there's a guy who flags down women drivers and pretends there was some horrible accident, and when they let up their guard for one second to call for help, he tries to enter their car and do only God knows to them. So, I do understand where you're coming from, but for at least me, some person in a business suit and a brief case could be dangerous. Even women could be dangerous. Unless I actually see something wrong, then will I stop.
And I can't stand wearing glasses in the rain too.
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And I don't mind wearing them when it's only raining a little, but then it gets worse, and they get all spattery, and there's no way to dry them, and they fog over...it's the worst! I'm just lucky I can more or less see without them. ;)
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For what it's worth, if I didn't know you, I wouldn't stop to pick you up either. It strikes me as quite foolish why anyone would do that. I'm surprised you're surprised no one offered - comin from a city of 8 million plus invisible people, you should be used to it by now :\
As for the whole Binghamton thing, that got so nasty so quickly. Two of my closest Bing friends and one of my current coworkers lived on that same Front Street. Even if it was years ago now, they were absolutely stunned, and I must admit I was depressed to hear see it on my news nets at the office :(. My boss being a dick didn't help matters much, but that's neither here nor there. Even if you know for a fact you never woulda been there, it's the fact that you were there at all that makes what happened meaningful, and that whole story just sucks balls, no matter how you slice it :\
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What dick-thing did your boss do? I definitely know what you mean; it did suck balls, both for the victims, and for everyone associated with it. In my traveling the last week, a couple people have asked me where I went to college, and I've told them SUNY Binghamton, and gotten to see their expression change to one of minor horror and sympathy. Definitely not how I wanted people to think of my alma mater...