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u/MistakeIndependent12

r/50501 r/emptynesters r/AdultChildren
▲ 411 r/50501

Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle - Protest Effectively thru public comment by THIS MONDAY June 15, 2026

If you've watched the news about the proposed Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle and felt the urge to fire off something angry, I want to offer a different idea.

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The National Park Service has opened a public comment period on this, and it closes THIS MONDAY, June 15 at 11:59 Mountain time.

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I've worked alongside these people for years on the preservation and tax credit side of the Service's work. The folks reading these comments are real historians. They know that bridge, they know that sightline, and most of them are not the ones driving this. They are doing their jobs. The rhetoric you see on TV and in your feed is not going to reach them, and frankly it gives them nothing to work with.

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Real feedback does reach them. The Service formally weighs what it calls substantive comments above general anger, which means a calm letter that engages the actual record carries more weight than a hundred furious ones. This is a place where civics moves the needle and noise does not.

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If you want to comment, here are the points that count:

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The Assessment of Effects admits the project would adversely affect historic properties, then drafts an agreement to proceed anyway. The rules say avoid harm first. That step got skipped.

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The arch sits directly on the designed sightline between the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge, and Arlington House. That bridge was built low on purpose so nothing would break the line. A 250-foot arch breaks it.

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The Service's own history shows planners studied monumental designs at this exact spot in the early 1900s and deliberately walked them back through the 1930s. The record argues against the arch, not for it.

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Ten days is not enough time to weigh a permanent structure of this scale. Ask them to extend the comment period.

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You can write a few sentences in your own words or borrow any of the above.

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Comment here before June 15:

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https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=151576

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u/MistakeIndependent12 — 25 days ago
▲ 1 r/AdultChildren

Sorting out what was mine from what was handed to me

I wrote something this week that started as a critique of a public event and turned into something more personal than I expected.

My father, who was in sobriety but also bipolar without any therapy/medical guidance, was a blue collar entrepreneur and drove a utility truck with the radio almost always tuned to a particular religious broadcaster. A lot of what I absorbed about faith, about how a household was supposed to work, about who was allowed to be who they were, came through that radio before I had any way to question it.

It took me until my thirties, leaving the church, coming back on my own terms, and eventually caring for my parents at the end, to sort out what I actually believed from what was simply handed to me by an alcoholic/addict. That sorting is still going.

If you grew up inside a belief system you didn't choose, with a parent who was certain in a way you couldn't argue with, some of this might feel familiar. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I just wrote it down, and it helped me to write it, and if it helps anyone here to read it, I am glad it did.

https://marcelobermudezinc.com/notes-from-a-scribe-the-fast-food-jubilee/

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u/MistakeIndependent12 — 2 months ago