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The Battle of the Wilderness was the first battle between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. The battle cost 4,000 soldiers their lives and wounded 20,000 others and started the final push towards the end of the war. Its site, Wilderness Battlefield near Fredericksburg, is one of the most historic spots in our nation's history. And you know what wants to set up camp? Wal-mart. From Ken Burns to David McCullough, historians are taking arms (or at least, pens) against the big bad corporation. Forget mom and pop, these guys want to dance all over the graves of your mom's mom's mom and your pop's pop's pop. According to the AP report (via WTOP), a letter signed by some 250 scholars put Wal-Mart on notice: "The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved."
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This year’s DC FOTOWEEK 2009 culminates in a closing gala celebration at Moderno (1939 12th St NW) o
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Remember when Disney wanted to piss all over history at Manassas Battlefield back in the '90s?
Oh boo f**king hoo. You're just pissed that Walmart is doing this. I bet you'd have no problem with pissing on history if it involved some urban hiptard dive taking over a historic downtown landmark. Like turning the Octogon House into a friggin Jose Andres upscale bistro, or the Hay Adams into Black Cat South. Or a Wegmans! That would be sooo cool! I bet none of you have ever been to Fredericksburg ("Oooh, that's in Virginia! They're all nazis! You can practically hear the goosestepping and banjos! Pass me another Stella!")
Anyway, the real problem with parks in Virginia isn't the historical watersports, it's all the guys banging eachother in the a$$. I mean, jeebus, I'm trying to teach my kid how to fly a kite and the damned plastic Barney kite lands on some guy getting a rimmer. Dude, WTF? Fortunately, quick thinker that I am, I explain that that man's just trying to help his friend find his car keys, which he sat on wrong.
I just looked at a map of the area in question:
http://www.civilwar.org/walmart08/maps/preservation_walmartlocation.htm
So, the proposed Walmart in question is not actually on the battlefield itself, or even within a mile of the actual point of conflict, but across a divided state highway from an area where Union troops mustered, which itself isn't even part of any historical military park.
This doesn't even hold a candle up to all the outlet malls sitting on top of the Gettysburg Historical Military Park, which you can't really even see anyway because they are behind a line of trees.
Answer:
A line of trees.
Not that I don't understand or even partially sympathize with the NIMBYs who are encouraging Walmart to consider moving a little further away with their plans, but this is hardly an example of Walmart pissing all over anybody's history.
And like monkey said, if Wegman's was building a supercenter across the street from Ford's Theatre, ya'all would be doing cartwheels.
ok, if a line of trees is the answer, what was the question?
Heh. The question is what is an adequate solution to an unsightly walmart box store in the far off background a mile behind a battlefield... as in, you plant a line of trees and nobody can see it anyway, so who cares? Unless, of course, your true agenda is to stave off the evil devil store walmart and its minions and are using historic preservation as the convenient excuse, because in love, war, and keeping out Walmart, all is fair and justified. As we all know, poor less desirable people shop at those. Ew.
it was a rhetorical question. you weren't supposed to answer.
Anyway, as soon as Treebeard and his thugged-out Ents hear about this $h!t, they gonna f**k Walmart up, yo.
So what you're saying is Historians don't want a Wal-Mart to be built on the same ground where Union soldiers took a dump ("muster" is such a fancy word) right before fighting an important battle.
Can we get the US Gov't to finally recognize sites of national poop significance?
LOOK--- Change is GOOD nothing is ever going to stay the same so get over it---Besides that part of town has NOTHING,,,NOTHING It would be nice if that part of town would go to their own Walmart!!!
LOOK--- Change is GOOD nothing is ever going to stay the same so get over it---Besides that part of town has NOTHING,,,NOTHING It would be nice if that part of town would go to their own Walmart!!!
LOOK--- Change is GOOD nothing is ever going to stay the same so get over it---Besides that part of town has NOTHING,,,NOTHING It would be nice if that part of town would go to their own Walmart!!!
I'd just be happy if the city architectural review commission would just realise it's 2009, not 1889. It's not as bad as Alexandria, but pretending things don't change in 120 years is myopic.