Saturday, May 19, 2007

A Few of My Favorite Monuments

This monument of Lee is a new monument and if I remember the story correctly it was initially placed on private land near the Middle Bridge but the park now owns this spot. And the park isn't exactly ecstatic about a Lee monument in this area as its really representing a pre battle event but the general public probably doesn't realize this and so it confuses more than it educates. The monument itself is nice and from this angle it almost looks like Lee is riding around the fence. Of course the sizes are not quite right but Lee isn't quite at the fence either.
Here is a detail from the McKinley monument. Its a bit odd to have a monument with the chief action being the delivery of coffee but I guess when you're president you can get any kind of monument erected for you. This is also a somewhat odd monument. I guess the intention is that this replicates a cooking exercise, however, I highly doubt that any soldiers used muskets to suspend their cooking kettle. There is too much risk of destroying your rifle so you'd have to use discarded muskets and even then it seems like an odd way to cook. On the other hand if there was a scarcity of wood to create a tripod discarded rifles might be the only way to do it. The bucket is now being filled with coins. I forgot to ask Mannie how often the park clears it out. After our bad luck on the trip I was looking for anything to get us on good ground again so I left some coins. At Gettysburg I rubbed O'Rourke's nose. Mike and I were willing to do just about anything to turn our bad luck around.
And this monument, to the 124th Pennsylvania, I just liked. The soldier is in great condition, the pose and outfit are great and the background was cool too. That's Mike sitting on the left side of the monument. I guess he was kinda worn out with his big camera rig.

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