Electric Map's survival
A public thank you is in order to the Gettysburg National Park Service and the Department of Interior for their acts of kindness to me these last few weeks in response to my efforts to express an unrelenting desire to have our Electric Map saved and preserved. When our superintendent has had to face up to the choice of being “right or being kind,” he has chosen the latter. How can anyone not appreciate that?
My fondest hope is that the decision makers concerning the fate of our Electric Map Visitors Center will decide on a reversal of their previous plan and allow the building to remain.
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One can visualize the removal of the Visitor’s Center Sign and have the following be a part of a new sign: (in no special order) A Museum to Civil War Era Telegraphy and Electromagnetism; The Adams County African American Heritage Museum (until a new museum is constructed); Artifacts of the Adams County Historical Society.
In the basement one or two rooms would be partitioned as a dorm for about four or five students from local colleges; these deserving students would be provided free board in exchange for being night watchmen.
On the Map itself, one can envision placing a yellow fiber-optic string that would show the exact whereabouts of the only telegraph line in Gettysburg during the time of the Battle. This then would become a “medium within a medium” because the Electric Map is a medium just like TVs, radios and computers; and by placing a telegraph line on the map, we would have something totally unique.
Then to have the courage to invite the students of deaf schools from all over the country to come to this facility would be daunting. There are 108 Schools for the Hearing Impaired in the United States. Gallaudet University, the Harvard of the Deaf Schools, is in nearby Washington.
My only wish is that anyone exhibiting a “foreign tongue” would not be admitted to this facility with the exception being the deaf students.
“The judgement of history” concerning the Electric Map in our beloved town of Gettysburg “is left to you the people.” For anyone to wait to be a “Monday Morning QB,” after the map is in rubble being hauled to the landfill, would be an act of cowardice.
Thanks in advance to your readers for their patience and kindness concerning this issue.
John Longanecker
Aspers
Is it too late. You be the judge.
SaveTheElectricMap.com