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July 14, 2006

Blogbat Publicitus: Wrapping Up Penn

Photoblogging America’s 230th Birthday

 

 

Back at last we are from all that is the wonderful land of Pennsylvania, I decided to share one more travelblog photoset from the fortnight I spent.

 

 

First stop: Harrisburg, where residents are preparing for the centennial celebration of the capitol.

 

Though the original seat of Pennsylvania government was at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the current of two Pennsylvania state houses in Harrisburg was built after the previous building burned down in an accidental fire in 1897. According to the capitol website, original plans called for a low-budget $500,000 replacement structure decried by the governor at the time for being less than worthy or adequate to house the government. In his words, the so-called Cobb building was “made of common brick embedded in cheap mortar, looks like a hastily erected factory building and is repulsive to the eye.” That plan was scrapped and a larger, much more inspiring classical structure was erected instead at a cost of $12 million – 24 times the cost of the Cobb building, but exquisitely ornate, incomprehensibly expansive, and utterly jaw-droppingly beautiful. On October 4, 1906 the building was dedicated. President Theodore Roosevelt described the green-domed capitol he was in attendance to dedicate as “the most beautiful state Capitol in the nation,” which seems from my abbreviated survey an apt description.

 

 

Outside, the state house building sprawled across an expansive piece of real estate. On a personal note, the capitol also happens to be where my own mother worked as a staff member for the governor while she was in college. 

 

 

Inside the massive state house was like an elegantly hewn granite and marble cave, reflecting warm, ambient orange light that filled the room and sparkled off the golden accents and lettering like exposed veins of golden ore.

 

 

Next stop: Gettysburg, site of one of the most important clashes to take place during the American Civil War, aka “The War of Northern Aggression”, “The War to Free the Slaves”, “The War on Southerners and Indians”, etc., etc.

 

 

 

It was during the same week of our visit that the battle of Gettysburg took place.

 

 

The corn was tall, the days were hot and humid, and the fallow fields were thick with weeds and brambles catching the arms and legs of men and horses alike. And blood was spilled for a cause for which the hearts that pumped it would never feel the joy of its great conclusion.

 

 

 

 

Also of great importance was this town for the address given to it by Republican President Abraham Lincoln to Gettysburg, in which he reaffirmed the spirit by which the United States was founded - and the honor due those who humbly sacrificed all to make that reality for the living.

 

 

 

We end at the beginning: Valley Forge. Near Philadelphia, this town holds the honor of being a vital command post for General George Washington. After the end of the Revolution, General Washington, in 1783, stepped down and disbanded the army. The victorious general’s acquiescence to civilian authority had never been witnessed in all of human history. In his farewell he offered this prayer in closing:

 

 I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for brethren who have served in the field; and finally that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.

 

As Abraham Lincoln reminded and exhorted Americans at the conclusion of his Gettysburg Address, "...[F]rom 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."

 

God bless America. Remember your roots.

 

 

 

 

Posted by Martin at July 14, 2006 02:45 AM

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