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
 
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