Here’s some free advice for the Bushy Run Battlefield Heritage Society: Don’t cancel the battlefield reenactment (“Pa. agency explains why it enacted new ‘no force-on-force rule’ for Bushy Run, other sites,” Feb. 6, TribLIVE). Replace the Native American side of the battle with sound effects.
There are many local universities and schools that offer classes in filmmaking and audiovisual engineering/recording. Recording war calls and sounds of musket fire and coordinating their playback during the reenactment would be an excellent project and a wonderful recruiting tool for any local entity lucky enough to land such a project. Many of the needed sound effects can probably be found on the internet for little or no cost. And perhaps this could lead to another project: creating an online library of war calls specific to the tribes involved in this battle.
I hope the unfortunate rule by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission that caused the cancellation will be reversed. In the meantime, perhaps it will spark some imaginative thinking that leads to new ways of learning about and documenting the past as well as creating a more immersive battlefield experience.
Ed Pencoske
Trafford