Remembering history the way they wished it had been
Circling the Wagons? 
As a great man once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,“i.e., try and settle for what you can get.
In that spirit, the proposed Theodore Roosevelt now proposes to scale back, trying to disarm critics focused on it’s size and location. A proposed Oyster Bay Long Island site has attracted opponents, and in the new scheme as much as 30% of the proposed 100,000 square foot structure would be hived off to put elsewhere.
America Bakes A Cake 
Wish last week’s Reagan Birthday madness would never end? 
Your dream draws closer, because America’s Reagan Centennial Countdown has begun!
Representative Elton Gallegly [R- Reagan Library] will be history’s handmaiden.
Gallegely is best known for his crusade to deny citizenship to American born children of the foreign born. Not that this stopped him from endorsing Mitt “Anchor Baby” Romney. 
His legislation exhibits the attention to detail that marks Reagan stagecraft.
Past Presidential centennial commissions have been filled with bipartisan Washington worthies. The Eisenhower Commission had seven Senators, seven House Members, the Archivist of the United States, and six public members appointed by the President. The Teddy Roosevelt Centennial Commission had eight Presidential appointees, two Senators and two Congressmen.
Gallegely’s bill would lift the dead hand of government by giving the Reagan Library Foundation control of the Commission. It would name six out of eleven commissioners. So the people who brought you the Nancy Reagan dress exhibit will get even more federal money to tell government certified tales about Reagan.
The Stump, In Happier Times 
Washington State now boasts the replica of a structure built for a Presidential event which never occurred, standing proudly at a different location.
The “McKinley Stump” is in Chehalis Washington’s evocatively named Recreation Park. It stood in various parts of town 100 years, but finally succumbed to ants and rot.
It was created for President McKinley, but never used by him. Theodore Roosevelt did speak from the stump, as did William Howard Taft before he was President. No word on what role America’s Fattest President might have had in starting the deterioration.
For you all you Presidential who-went-where-when obsessives, The 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry/ Civil War Musings blog has a roundup on Presidential visits to the Antietam battlefield near Washington.
With the special bonus of extensively documenting future President McKinley’s participation in the battle, where he heroically shuffled coffee to the front lines under fire.
?
Community meetings on the proposed Oyster Bay Long Island Theodore Roosevelt museum are rolling along, with residents are asking Theodore Roosevelt Association President James Bruns some entertaining questions.
One questioner asked what exactly they’d put in the 100,000 square foot building since Roosevelt’s papers are at Harvard and the Library of Congress.
Bruns says they don’t need paper when they have pizazz!
Another pest inquired how much of the estimated $120 million cost is at hand.
“Mike Giardina asked, “How much money does the TRA have in the bank?”Mr. Bruns said they have pledges of $1 million.
Mr. Giardina: “And in the bank?”
Mr. Bruns, “I’m not going to divulge that.“
Mr. Gardina: “You have zero. You have no website*. Come on.”
[*They have one, but it’s pretty useless on the proposed museum] 
