Why hasn't the Civil War Trust done anything? Karen On Oct 17, 2013 7:40 PM, "Steven T. Corneliussen" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On October 24, a politician-appointed Virginia state panel will pass > judgment on a Fort Monroe real estate development plan purporting to > respect inescapable economic realities. The plan permanently deletes > Chesapeake Bay sense of place from that national treasure of four > centuries' standing. > > It's the eleventh hour, but there's something citizens can do. > > The alarm is being sounded by the National Parks Conservation Association, > with its more than half-million members, and by Tidewater's leading daily, > the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. See FortMonroeNationalPark.org for links (and > for an instantaneous visual overview). > > Consistently over an eight-year process, Virginia's leaders of both > parties have shown grim resolve to kowtow to the development industry > concerning this billion-dollar waterfront's post-Army future. So they've > failed in their fiduciary duty, and on Oct. 24 will almost surely cement > the failure. > > Unfortunately, they've succeeded in hoodwinking the national media, > and--until a very recent awakening--preservation organizations including > Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, a small committee that I > co-founded but no longer represent. Good people trusted a deeply rigged > process, hoping in vain that a split, hobbled national monument (national > park) could be expanded and repaired later. (Please challenge me on "deeply > rigged.") > > Most damagingly, good people at the National Trust for Historic > Preservation withheld NTHP's national moral authority from efforts to > protect Fort Monroe's sense-of-place-defining bayfront viewsheds. (Please > challenge me on this charge too.) No prominent historian--not the scholar > Ed Ayers, not the writer Adam Goodheart--has stood up for Fort Monroe's > sense of place. > > Support for saving Fort Monroe is nearly unanimous in Virginia, but it is > developers who bankroll political campaigns. So Virginia needs national > media attention--a national spotlight on the impending Fort Monroe failure, > with its thousand-year implications for American civic memory. > > A discussion of sorts is underway beneath a new posting in the New York > Times's online Civil War "Disunion" forum. At > http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-real-rebels-of-the-civil-war/, > please click "recommend" on, and please consider responding to, my Fort > Monroe comment and also that of another Fort Monroe defender, Scott Butler. > > It's a long shot. In Virginia the issue is all but decided. We lost. But > national media attention could still, just conceivably, change things. The > Times's online "Disunion" discussion gets widely read. > > Thanks. > > Steven T. Corneliussen > Poquoson, Virginia > http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/ > > http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/science-and-the-media > > ______________________________________ > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at > http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html > ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html