Following up on Adrienne’s Lincoln Memorial post, I
wanted to post a bit about old Honest Abe myself. Nothing too grandiose, just to put a thanks out to the big guy for all
the good work he did for the country, and a tip of the hat for giving us a fine day of vacation…even if it won’t
likely be a day of vacation for me. So two things about Abe.
The first is that I urge you to pick up
and read a relatively new book out called Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell. The book is not about the happiest of subjects. She examines the lives and deaths…mostly the
deaths…of three of our former presidents, Garfield, Lincoln and McKinley. She pays homage to them through travel, by
heading to grave sites, museums, and obscure historical spots where, for example, pieces of Lincoln’s skull are on
display.
But Vowell is witty and hilarious and informative, and yet manages to maintain a necessary
measure of reverence for these places and the people she is writing about. She is, as anyone known who has ever read or
heard Sarah, a devout fan of Honest Abe, and her passion for Lincoln and her desire to share her knowledge of him with
us is one of the things that makes this book sparkle. So anyway, give it a read, and further, just for sh*ts and
giggles, let me direct you to a pano I shot a
while back for the Global Pano project inside Lincoln’s Memorial.