[PRCo] Re: museums (was Re: Re: M454)

[Fred Schneider]

Absolutely amazing ... even at the Mexican rates of pay, you cannot  
afford to have 3000 steel workers in a mill when you can automate it  
and get by with 300 and a computer.

One cannot help but wonder how long we will still have people with  
enough money to be able to pay to visit these relics?

How long with the British have people who can afford to ride behind  
their hundreds of active preserved steam locomotives?

And how long before none it will make any sense and the public will  
not even come for that reason?   I've begun to notice that because  
the public no longer understands history, people go to Colonial  
Williamsburg, Viriginia.   They look around for a few hours.   They  
have naught a clue that Colonial is synonymous with us, i.e.  
Virginia, being a colony of England and that Williamsburg is the  
reconstructed English capital of that colony.   After a few hours  
many or perhaps most of the tourists get bored.   They go off to the  
Pottery Factory and shop.   They go to the nearby shopping centers  
and shop.   They go to Busch Gardens and ride the thrill rides.   But  
one of the most fantastic historical sites in the United States only  
represents a mile of old buildings.   So what.

And if you don't think this is real, just spend an afternoon at your  
local trolley museum listening to the public calling trolleys choo  
choos and telling their kids that the chugging air compressor is the  
engine that makes it go.   The parents never rode  street car.   They  
grew up with their own automobiles in the MTV / cell phone / ipod  
era.   They don't know what steel mills, street cars, ice boxes, coal  
furnaces, hauling out the ashes, cook stoves, 2000-seat movie  
palaces, walking to town to shop, stores downtown open on Friday  
night, etc. are all about.

On Dec 26, 2007, at 12:34 AM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Dec 2007, Fred Schneider wrote:
>
>> Send me a URL or pitchurs or somesing about it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundidora_Park
> http://www.parquefundidora.org/
>
>