Requiem For A Small Town
Sopris, Colorado
December 1970 | Volume 22, Issue 1
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EmailBefore the celebration there was a Mass. From the back of the church a procession of Sopris people came to the altar bearing the things for the Offertory: a loaf of freshly baked bread in a basket woven by Pop Incitti, a bottle of wine, a columbine, a miner’s helmet, a lump of coal on a silver tray.
A priest read from Ecclesiastes:
After the Mass an old woman came out of a house nearby, shooing the chickens, and said, “Be sure and have a dance so when you’re old like me you can come back with a fishing pole and say, down there is where I had a dance.”
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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
