"Collision Course," Patricia Calhoun, February 14
It is not only the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations that should be upset with History Colorado. Anyone visiting the new structure on Broadway will be equally offended. Most exhibits currently on display contain little history and are lame and uninspired on any given day. The "re-created" scenes are obviously constructed from new materials (probably from Home Depot) and offer no tangible connection to the past, unlike the previous museum (demolished long before the concrete ever reached its ultimate strength).
While we can't bring back the old museum (lost to history, ironically), we should bring back the wonderfully curated exhibits and remove the silly, unprofessional nonsense currently offending those who paid for it — unless they, too, are lost to history due to incompetence. The current curators seem to be descendants of those who burned the library in Alexandria, Egypt, some years ago, but I suspect they can claim "no knowledge."
Ancel Phelps
Denver
Very nice story about the controversy of the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit. Well, what can one expect from a "museum" that feels it necessary to have a zombie exhibit? Or from a historian/curator whose dissertation is that narrow? Why not write a dissertation on the pitfalls of "interpreting" another culture's history, or of "interpreting" any history for the general public, rather than on how to spin the past? We all know that history is written by the victors — so wouldn't a museum that respected the populations they choose to highlight, and its visitors, at best exhibit available source documents, testimony and other facts and let folks determine historical meaning for themselves?
Must we be steered in our thinking? What would be said of a Holocaust interpretation exhibit that didn't from the start work closely with those whose ancestors suffered, but instead presented "multiple and complex viewpoints" and then proceeded to take cues from "testing" the audience? The despicable massacres and deceits perpetrated on the native tribes deserve no less attention.
Charles Rice
Colorado Springs
"The Meaning of Life," Melanie Asmar, January 24
Catholicism has always been double-tongued, or spoken with a forked tongue: Now they want to wash their hands by claiming that it is the law that says that a fetus is not a baby? While Catholicism claims that it is an entity at conception, they allowed these two infants to die by not performing a C-section on Lori Stodghill. On the one hand, they say contraception is wrong and that abortion is wrong — but if a fetus isn't a real person, then abortion shouldn't be wrong.
And how many times have babies been saved by a C-section when a mother's life was in danger? And aren't Colorado Health Initiative, St. More Hospital and Catholicism all linked as one?
Angie Porter
Denver