at the risk of being thought of, and perhaps being, a philistine of the very worst kind, i have to say in response to the park services inquiries about preserving the paramount ranch that, like so many of the subscribers to this list, i really care only about "art" [though i would prefer to say "texts" to avoid lots of irresolvable dilemmas], and don't really care at all about preserving places MERELY because something of historic interest took place there . . . this seems to me a kind of antiquarianism which, while perhaps benign, tells us of very little, the kind of place one visits only with a guidebook ["See, Johnny, that's the very spot where Abraham Lincoln found the penny that he walked five miles to return . . ."; "Oh, wow, Dad, that's neat . . . we learned all about that in history class."] . . . if we can learn something from visiting the paramount ranch--that is, if it is readable as a text--then it ought to be preserved or what it can teach us ought to be preserved . . . but if it is of interest merely because it happens to be where something of note happened, then why bother . . . . . . history matters, but history is in texts, not things mike frank ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]