For hundreds of years museums have acquired and st...

2006-03-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

For hundreds of years museums have acquired and stored priceless artifacts for us to see and enjoy. One of the saddest stories coming out of Iraq was the sacking of museums where some of mankinds earliest social artifacts were stored.

But now, many of those venerable museums find their collections are in danger because of questions about how those artifacts were acquired. In some cases those objects were clearly acquired illegally. In other cases new laws were passed such that now the objects appear to have been acquired illegally, even thought the objects and their acquisition far predate the laws that now put them in question.

The riverfront plantations on the James have been destroying the river for centuries. And now, like some self righteous descendant of an egyptian tomb robber, we want to come along and tell the current owners that what they are doing is sacreligious.

Well, it is sacreligious. But we have only recently become educated enough to see the value of what we are losing, and now we want it back. "Encouraging environmentally friendly development practices" is only a code word for stealing what we now see as valuable without paying rent for the safekeeping in the meantime. It is a way of getting what we all want without paying for it.

"Mobilizing multidisciplinary teams" is a code word for overwhelming force.

"Agricultural and applied economics" is going to tell those people that they can no longer afford to run the museum.

The poor bastards who built and maintained and enjoyed the museum, and saved whatever is left for all to enjoy all these years will get publicly raped at a symposium where the results are a foregone conclusion.

This makes me want to throw up in the river that was a primary foundation of everything we now like to think of as American. If the river is so valuable, fine. If protecting it means we have to preserve the waterfront, fine. If preservng the waterfront means the current owners no longer get to participate in economic growth, fine.

Show me the money that says you are willing to pay the price of admission to the museum.

Comments on The Road to Ruin: Land Use and Water Quality: Studying the James Riv...

For hundreds of years museums have acquired and st...