Ruby Slippers

I took my family to the newly-refurbished National Museum of American History on the National Mall today. The museum has recently reopened following a 3-year renovation. The museum houses both some of the finest artifacts of American History and famous pop-culture notables as well. Exhibits include the original Star-Spangled Banner which flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore and so inspired Francis Scott Key , the famous lunch counter from Greensboro, N.C., documents and artifacts from many immigrants - "legal" and otherwise - to the United States, and a plethora items such as doll houses, T.V. sets, and - most famously - the "ruby slippers" Dorothy wore in the "Wizard of Oz."

The only remaining hand-written copy of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is also at the museum for a limited engagement. The document - three pages of neat, cursive script on hand-lined parchment - is on loan from the White House until Inauguration Day. This document was the reason I dragged my family into the city on a windy, cold January day and it is every bit as inspiring as I had hoped it would be.

As I read the words written in Lincoln's own, neat script, tears literally welled up in my eyes - and I say this as a Virginian reared in the mythology of the old Confederacy. Lincoln was a great man, whose simple eloquence has been unmatched in presidential oratory either before or since. It is hard to describe the feeling of reading the words "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." A combination of excitement and sorrow... My heart stirred reading those words today because I think we are at a similar crossroads now, and no less important a moment in the history of our great nation.

However, after I passed through the exhibition hall, my blood began to boil. There were many lines at the museum today. Lines to see the Star Spangled Banner, newly restored like its home museum. Lines to see the gowns of various First Ladies. Lines even to see Julia Childs' kitchen, lovingly rebuilt in its own exhibition space. But no line was as long as the one to see Dorothy's "ruby slippers" - a cheap pair of faux-leather pumps covered with red sequins.

As for the Gettysburg Address... there was no line.

I looked around the museum with newly opened eyes, and wondered what that portended for the United States. We Americans who abound in "reality television" and cheap journalistic voyeurism - where are we headed collectively as a nation, I wondered? That we care more for gowns worn by the wealthy or cheap props worn by actors and actresses... what does that mean for our future?

Many gave all in Gettysburg on those hot summer days in 1863. And many more have given all since that day - on the fields of France, in the sands of the Pacific, in the jungles of Vietnam, and even among the palm groves of Iraq. But many more do not understand the gift they have been given by those who have given all... a fact never on display as much as on January 3rd, 2009, at the National Museum of American History...