Parks, monuments, cultural institutions and museums are shuttered for the third day today, and here in Washington, DC things are eerily silent. While front page news remains focused on the shutdown’s impact to the still-fragile economic recovery, the looming debt ceiling debate, health care and tax reform, the heart and soul of the city are dark and quiet. As one writer so aptly explained in a recent article:
We forget that culture is not only constructed through tradition but through artifact. We save these things, yellowed parchment scribbled over and the skeletons of species we never got the chance to meet, because they remind us of what once was, of who we have been and consequently, who we are and who we can be. These museums and monuments are not only diversions, activities for slow weekends, but the repositories of fact. Their closure is an economic (lest we forgot how important tourism is) and symbolic blow.
Coast to coast, the 401 parks operated by the National Park Service are closed, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion National Park, Mount Ranier, and many others. All the Smithsonian’s buildings, located in DC and New York, are closed, as is Independence Hall in Philadelphia and many other sites.
So what’s the cost? In dollars, the National Park Service has estimated that America’s national parks received 715,000 daily visits in October 2012, and contributed $76 million to local economies during each of those days. The U.S. Travel Association says that the average overseas traveler spends about $4,500 when they come to the States.
And then there’s the other cost: to our culture and the value we place on it as a nation. Categorized as “non-essential” in the current budget fight, legislators often treat archaeological, historical, art and cultural institutions as the cherry on top that we’re lucky to have, rather than a basic right of every citizen. Perhaps it’s time to change that conversation.