Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Because America

I visited Graceland when I was 19 years old, and that experience was so monumental, so mind-blowing, that I no longer felt the need to make pilgrimage anywhere else. (It took another 15 years and the careful study of Peter Guralnick's hefty two-volume Elvis Presley biography before I was able to let go of my obsession with the magnetic charms of the King.) Honestly, once you've gazed upon the Jungle Room, all the antiquities of the Ancient Near East have nothing to offer.

Despite my enduring dedication to Abraham Lincoln, that disinterest applies to Civil War sites as well. Maybe coming of age in Virginia, where you can't turn around without running into a battlefield marker, has something to do with that. However, I now have a reason, nay, a need, to journey to Gettysburg: the Civil Wars Tails at the Homestead Diorama Museum.

I know other nations have their fair share of quirky, obsessive personalities, but I am absolutely confident that none of them have a pair of sisters who create exquisitely detailed and perfectly scaled dioramas of Civil War battles in which all the combatants (wearing accurate uniforms) are cats. Cats.

Because America, people. Because America.