Monument to Defeat: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in American Culture and Society

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAWRENCE A. TRITLE
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service

Monument or memorial? Defeat or withdrawal? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC pays tribute to more than 58,000 Americans who died fighting an unpopular war. Yet today the ‘Wall’, as it is known to most Americans, is the most visited site managed by the US National Park Service. Weekend visitors will happen upon an almost festive place as thousands of people pass by looking at the names – what do they think, imagine? This chapter discusses not only the story and controversy behind the building of the ‘Wall’, but also how it reflects the collective memory of a society and its values, and how these are constructed.

Filling in the Blanks: Deriving Meaning from Objects in the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Collection

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulette Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
The Body ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
Park Service

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection is one of the most fascinating American museum collections being compiled today. It consists of over 100,000 photos, letters, diaries, personal mementoes, military paraphernalia and other objects visitors have left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. since the Memorial was dedicated in 1982. The National Park Service of the National Capitol Region, which is the body that manages and cares for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, officially created and began managing the objects associated with the Memorial in 1984.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Live Interactive Virtual Explorations Involving a Hard-to-Reach Native American Earth Lodge and a Pacific Island Volcanoes Site

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Mann Bruch ◽  
Hans-Werner Braun ◽  
Susan Teel
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Science Foundation ◽  
High Performance ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Education Network

For several years, National Park Service scientists, historians, and educators have been working with National Science Foundation-funded High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) researchers on developing, implementing, and evaluating Live Interactive Virtual Explorations (LIVE) at several sites. The LIVE activities utilize computers with headsets and microphones to link National Park Service sites with an array of audiences. The two case studies in this paper examine the effectiveness of LIVE activities that allow Washington, DC, inner-city youth to explore two hard-to-reach National Park Service sites: Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota and the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers: actualizing geographic thought

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Bauch ◽  
Emily Eliza Scott
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Art World ◽  
Geographic Thought ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Urban Places

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers (LAUR) is one of a growing number of collectives associated with the art world that offer new methods for expressing and performing insights rooted in geographical thought. Borrowing the US National Park Service ranger ‘persona,’ the LAUR demonstrate a number of ways to untangle nature-society issues in cities. The ranger persona is successful in part because of its ability to spatially relocate the affect associated with (supposed) pristine nature to urban places. The article contains a toolkit of programs that the LAUR have employed to re-activate urban space.

scholarly journals Preservation and DNA Fingerprinting of the Historic Tidal Basin Cherries

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 189-192
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Pooler
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Rapd Markers ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Genetic Distances ◽  
Tidal Basin ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Flowering Cherry ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The historic Japanese flowering cherry trees planted around the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, were given to the United States in 1912 as a gift from Japan, yet only a small portion of the original trees remain. In cooperation with the National Park Service, the U.S. National Arboretum clonally propagated a portion of these trees. DNA from these and other P. x yedoensis plants obtained from domestic commercial nurseries were compared using RAPD markers. Twenty-one 10-nucleotide primers yielded 80 repeatable bands that were used to assess genetic distances among the accessions. The genetic distances ranged from 0.65 to 1.0, with thirteen accessions identical at all loci tested. The most genetically dissimilar trees were P. x yedoensis accessions that were collected as seed in Japan. Accessions obtained from commercial nurseries including ‘Afterglow’, ‘Akebono’, and Yoshino were also dissimilar to the Tidal Basin trees. This study indicated that most of the older trees planted around the Tidal Basin are genetically very similar, but that variability in P. x yedoensis exists, especially in accessions collected as seed from Japan.

scholarly journals Relief Presentation on US National Park Service Maps

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Tom Patterson
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Landscape Heterogeneity ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Harpers Ferry ◽  
The Media ◽  
Diverse Audience ◽  
Mode Of Production

This paper examines the evolution of relief presentations on maps developed by Harpers Ferry Center, the media service center of the US National Park Service (NPS). Harpers Ferry Center produces the maps used by park visitors. I will discuss five park maps, each with a distinctive relief style and mode of production. They appear in rough chronological order of their development. Recent relief presentations are generally more detailed, colorful, and realistic than those from earlier years. Changing technology is largely responsible for the different relief styles found on park maps. Some relief treatments today were not possible, or imaginable, in 1977 when the NPS established the brochure program in its modern phase. Landscape heterogeneity is another factor behind the development of different relief styles. With over 400 park sites ranging from the glacial mountains of Alaska to the rolling piedmont of Virginia, a one-style-fits-all approach cannot adequately depict all landscapes. NPS maps serve some 300 million park visitors each year. Our ongoing effort to make understandable maps for this diverse audience has further spurred experiments in relief presentation.

A National Park in the Wasteland

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lary M. Dilsaver
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Arid Areas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Negative View ◽  
Joshua Tree National Park ◽  
Park Service

The National Park Service functions through the conceptual framework of American culture, which derives from Christian ideas born in the Middle East. Biblical societies reacted to deserts in two ways. Most people shunned arid areas as dangerous and bereft of life. But a second belief drew prophets and others who sought retreat for meditation or seclusion. The National Park Service and the public initially held the negative view of the desert, but a rise in appreciation of its sublime character challenged that perception. Joshua Tree National Park shows how that change influenced the existence and management of an arid park.

scholarly journals Fitting the US National Park Service for Change

BioScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (8) ◽  
pp. 651-657
Author(s):  
Mark W Schwartz ◽  
Kent H Redford ◽  
Elaine F Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Invasive Species ◽  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Active Management ◽  
Ecosystem Change ◽  
Support Tools ◽  
The Us ◽  
Management Capacity ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Management Approaches

Abstract The US National Park Service (NPS), which manages over 85 million acres and over 400 units, contends with myriad external drivers of ecosystem change that threaten parks. Stressors such as invasive species, habitat fragmentation, warming climates and rising sea level, raise the potential that parks will not attain or sustain their congressionally designated missions. Using invasive animals as a focal example of such changes, we suggest the NPS consider increasing active management of resources, participating in cooperative ecoregional management, increasing the use of public participation, and using formal decision support tools. We illustrate how these management approaches are currently underused. Acknowledging that invasive species are but one of a suite of problems that are threatening to overwhelm park management capacity we believe that the approaches we outline generalize to myriad problems facing the NPS.

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