Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

For eight months (me) and twice for two months (Stephanie), we lived in the land of Lincoln. After dropping off my car in Macomb, where I would teach for two semesters at Western Illinois University, Mom, Stephanie, and I rendevouzed in Springfield, IL, where we spent the night. On the way "out of town," we drove past Lincoln's tomb just north of Springfield. Twice during one of her summers in Illinois, Stephanie visited the brand-new Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. On the second trip there, she and I met in Macomb, went to the Dickson Indian Mounds museum, then on to New Salem. We watched "Little Shop of Horrors" in an amphitheater there, then spent the night in a bed and breakfast in nearby Peterburg. In the morning we drove down the street to the cemetery where Ann Rutledge, reportedly Abraham Lincoln's first love, was buried (along with Edgar Lee Masters, author of "Spoon River Anthology"). Then we drove back to New Salem, the restored village where the young Lincoln ran a store, read, and first ventured into politics as a state representative. I had seen Sam Waterson portray this Lincoln on Broadway, with my friend Darra. Then we drove in Springfield, where we went to the massive, stupendous museum and library. Later that night Stephanie left me at the Springfield train station, where I took a train to Chicago, just like Lincoln did on his way to give his "House Divided" speech in New York City and on his way to the inauguration.

During one of her presidential library visits, Stephanie caught sight in the gift shop of an Abraham Lincoln doll. She bought one and eventually gave it to our nephew, Jacob. Later we called the store and ordered a replacement, along with a Mary Todd Lincoln doll. They remain among the most popular items in Stephanie's classroom (photographed back in November, below), where the now sit alongside the Sherlock Holmes doll. Today is Lincoln's birthday- 200 years ago - it's a state holiday every year in Illinois. Stephanie also bought several children's books about Abraham Lincoln that have been pretty popular with her students, especially Abe's Hat. (While in the library and museum, we saw one of Lincoln's real (top) hats, the dress that Mary Todd Lincoln wore to the inauguration (mimicked in the doll now in Stephanie's classroom), the bed in which Lincoln died (on loan from Chicago Historical Society, where I once saw it), and a replica of the White House when the newly dead Lincoln lay in state.)

Of course, KY and Indiana are also in the Lincoln birthday sweepstakes. 22 years ago Mom and I visited Lincoln's birthplace in KY - and we'll have to go back, since it's just an hour away - and then two Thanksgivings ago - on the day after - we visited Lincoln's boyhood home outside of Evansville, IN (in an eventful day for Stephanie, Vincent, Grandma Martha, Frisco, and I). They had a cute little museum and a great trail/walk through various sites. We'd have to go for a longer time to also see the house where Lincoln's mother (or stepmother?), Nancy Hanks, grew up. This past summer, you might remember, one of our reasons for going to Fort Wayne, IN, was to see the Lincoln Museum there - but, unfortunately, it had just closed. We've cherished for years our special Florida license plates (manatees, turtles, etc.). For reasons I'll explain later, we are currently without those. Our first KY titled and tagged car was the brown car, the Nissan, which got a breast cancer license plate. For the tan car, the Camry, we selected the license below, which highlights today's Lincoln bicentennial birthday and KY's status as the birthplace of Lincoln.

P.S. Last night Stephanie and I - in between occasional peeks back at "Idol" - watched Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s fascinating "Looking for Lincoln" documentary, which essentially started at the library and museum in Springfield. It also stopped by the boyhood home, though it spent little time in KY. It also spent time in Ford's Theater (where President Obama was last night and which Stephanie and I (separately) have both visited, me for a theater production of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with Mr. Gilpin's 1979 bus tour (?). It also went to Gettysburg, which I visited with Susan and scene of a favorite book/movie of mine: "Killer Angels"/"Gettysburg." The documentary sketched a fascinating portrait of a Lincoln as a flawed, sometimes tortured but always growing and still great man. Among the more interesting scenes were the visit by Gates, an African American scholar, to a Sons of Confederate Veterans events (folks warm up to him after the organization honors the descendants of an African American man who helped save his master during the Civil War), and interviews with Presdient Bush (W.) and President Clinton (Bill.) There has been of wave of segments about Lincoln on National Public Radio this week also. This afternoon I heard a "Talk of the Nation" with the author of a book about Lincoln's depression. Apparently Lincoln spent time with the Speed family, here in the Louisville metro area, as part of the recovery from his second bout of depression, during the ups and downs of his relationship with the young Mary Todd (both from Springfield and (down the road from here) Lexington, KY). (Stephanie also read a book about the friendship of Mary Todd Lincoln with a former slave Mrs. Keckly and just finished Weird Kentucky! which has some history about the home Mary Todd Lincoln grew up in in Lexington.)

P.P.S. Stephanie also reminded me that when I led our caravan by Lincoln's tomb in August 2003, I was driving that somewhat ill-fated rented moving truck. In between going to the library and museum and me going to the Amtrak station in Springfield, we went back to the tomb and actually walked around and went in (to the insides of the monument that surrounds the tomb). Twice in the past year bad weather has dampened Lincoln birthday celebrations scheduled for Hodgkensville, KY, Lincoln's birthplace. A year ago Laura Bush was to come to a big celebration, starting the birthday bicentennial year, and the whole thing was canceled thanks to the snow storm (see "Snow emergency") that started our blog. Then this week the combination of the ice storm and then Wednesday the wind storm left just a few hundred people at the birthday celebration (partly since many people there that week had not had power) and some of the Lincoln sites there they could not even hav open to the public). "It feels like we're cursed," said one local. If the weather lightens, later this summer, Ed Hamilton, the Louisville sculptor whose studio is around the corner from my first Louisville apartment, in Phoenix Hill, is set to unveil a new Lincoln statue, which will be in the extended Waterfront Park along the Ohio River, near the railroad bridge they're turning into a pedestrian bridge.

-- Perry