Essays
Happy Valentines Day With Love, The National Park Service
from phillyskyline.com
14 February 2007
Why does it feel — despite the recent announcement of the retraction of most of the security at Independence National Historic Park — that the President himself is making the day-to-day decision-making at the National Park Service? Last week it was the annual insistence — a mantra it has become for the simple-minded on the right — on upping the daily quota of snowmobiles in Yellowstone. It is some kind of depraved test against the imagined tyranny of the regulatory class: you ought to be allowed to do whatever the hell you feel like on public land — it’s yours isn’t, drill for gas why don’t you, turn that two-stroke engine, the more noise the better.
In what could be termed the opposite maneuver, they shut Washington Square today — Independence Square too, but I didn’t have time to deal with that. On this, the 331st anniversary (February 14, 1776, before Hallmark got into the printing business too) of the publication of the third and complete edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, you need to know that your government, perhaps the President himself, as it could only possibly be, decided that because of snow (or was it slush?) you ought not to enjoy your park. Caution tape was strung across all nine entrances to Washington Square (and all those I could see of Independence too) after they had taken the trouble to power sweep all the pathways. Swept clean and closed. Why? Is it because a government this incompetent can’t imagine — can’t imagine! — keeping the pathways of an historic public square in the center of a bustling city — that square itself filled with the remains of thousands of men who died to secure our freedom from the inveterate enemy of liberty, as Paine called George III — free of snow and ice so that you may walk through it, stop to look at the white flakes gathering against the gray branches of the plane trees, or watch your child play? Is it because the NPS, like the rest of the federal government, believes that if it strikes fear inside you you are likely to cower and demand that bombs fall over Tehran? Is it because not since Andrew Jackson has there been a president so disdainful of the beauty, emotion, and pleasure of cities and city life? Is it because the NPS budget has been whittled away by the war-bill, the expensive contracts handed to Bush-family friends at Wackenhut or Johnson Controls or the other republican military firms who so brutally turned INHP into an ugly fortress? Is it because they thought they knew so well that you or I might slip in the slush, hurt ourselves, that it wanted to think, decide, protect us on our behalf? (Where the hell are all the libertarians while this is going on?) Is NPS really worried that if I fell and hurt myself I might demand to know why we have a national park service if it can’t keep the shrines of our national heritage accessible to the public in the middle of the afternoon on day that produced rain and no more than a dusting of snow?
What is it, George? For five years you have taken from me my birth-rite as a Philadelphian to amble through, touch, and sit in the arcades of Independence Hall, to look upon my nation’s heritage as my own, and thus to love my country ever-stronger. You — selected from the rest of mankind (oh, you think you were), [your] mind early poisoned by importance; and the world [you] act in differs so materially from the world at large, that [you] have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when [you] are succeeded to the government are…the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions — have made our nation so pathetic, incompetent, and impotent that upon seeing your grim yellow warnings that I, on my way to pick up my daughter, a first-grader at Independence Charter School, would yell into the platinum clouds: O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
I gleefully hurled your bullshit caution tape into the trash cans. Children smiled upon me. I asked them wouldn’t they like to play in the park on a snowy day? By four Washington Square had already filled with those — dogwalkers, children, mothers, office workers, and tourists — who never realized what had (briefly, I presume, as the caution tape was taut and felt fresh) been taken from them.
Stand forth, eh? Let’s get some answers, because I for one can’t put up with this much longer.
Update: from a phone call asking why
M. Havelin at the INHP told me that the caution tape was put up to keep visitors safe from icy conditions. When I asked her why they had done so after using their new expensive equipment to clear the paths, she had no answer. She assumed the tape was still up this morning at 11. I told her it wasn’t. She asked if the paths had been cleared. I said no, people are trudging through. She said someone must have improperly removed the tape. I asked her if putting up the tape was was triage — they have 72 miles of trails (trails!) to keep clear and limited resources — if they can’t get to it, they close it? After pausing a minute she said, yes. I asked her how they justify shutting down a city park in the middle of an afternoon which produced only slush. She said this isn’t a city park.
She was defensive and angry and didn’t understand my questions — though she tried to be polite. The essence here is that they don’t get their responsibility in operating a park in the middle of the city. Thus, paths and walkways and sidewalks are trails in their vernacular. Thus, they would treat a slushy day as an avalanche and put up barricades, not understanding that city life goes on, as much as the media would like us to hunker down and worry. Thus she takes me literally when I say this is a city park.
Like any NSP line-worker who may or may not be a political hack she was defensive about not doing enough in a time of limited resources. She couldn’t see the big picture, certainly. They’re doing the best they can! she said. We have limited resources, she said, but I’d be willing to guess she cheered those critical tax cuts…
So we have an imagination-deficit. We also have a simple renunciation of duty. The Fairmount Park Commission, for all its budget woes and limited resources doesn’t shut Rittenhouse Square. PennDOT doesn’t close the Schuylkill Expressway. The NSP wants you to think it’s doing you a favor — but in reality it’s saying we won’t do even the very basic.
I think also the city has been timid at best in dealing with the NPS. It was mostly local and private money that paid for the $300 million renovation of the park — and yet they bully us over and over again. Philadelphia could simply demand as a matter of public safety that all “trails” in the park system be kept open and in safe condition at all times. A simple basic condition.
M. Havelin seemed shocked that the caution tape was down — shocked and disappointed. I suspect by now it may be up again. That was the most she could understand of our phone call.
Murmurs of Democracy at Independence Hall « Essays » Squadrone Volante
