Monument Valley (Adult Images)

The kids are studying the Civil War this year (or the War of Norther Aggression, if you are an A-hole),

It was a great follow up to the visit to Plymouth Church, but a little different.  Back in the 1860's the Underground Railroad did everything it could to keep everything secrete.  Once the war started it was all about glory and egos.  Those records can not be destroyed.

Then we went to lunch.  A perfect meal at General Picketts Buffet.  How else to you feed 100 kids and parents in 20 minutes.  They put the Jello and pudding in the same chiller with the salads.  The kids loved that.




Then we got back on the buses and were joined by a guide.  He took us all around Gettysburg.  We jumped out a few times.  Our guide was great.  He had a lot of fun with the kids and the kids had a lot of fun with him.  He also explained in very real terms why the geography of Gettysburg and the way the Armies were situated led to a perfect storm of an endless battle and  human death.

The kids had fun with a machine made to kill people.

We went to the top of Little Round Top.
It was what  the  armies wanted

This is why they were fighting for Little Round Top.  From here you can kill a lot of people and they can't kill you.  The kids thought it was a great place to play.

They were forbidden to play on the rock on top of Little Round Top.

That is the boot of Brigadier General Gouverneur K Warren.
He is the guy that won the battle for the North.

Here is a better statue of Warren. It is around the corner from my house.  His sister was Emily, she happened to marry Washington Roebling.  She probably built the Brooklyn Bridge, but that is another story.

Thanks brklynnovember in the flickr pool.

It was really special to recite the Gettysburg Address 300 yards from where Lincoln said it.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

GRAPHIC ADULT CONTENT BELOW.

Blank space intentional.

Blank space intentional.

Blank space intentional.

Throughout the trip we heard words like honor, greatness, bravery, liberty, rights, "love of country", commitment and honor again.  If we want to take one step towards ending wars we should use words like death, orphan, amputation, diarrheal, and death again.

These are the images I would put around Gettysburg.

Art Workers Coalition,

LIFE

Maybe if our 10 year olds knew what war war really like, as opposed to the remote control Star Wars version they are fed there might be one less war in the future.  

We need to tell our children that there is no glory in war.  No honor.  Maybe they will find another way.