Look! Today I got to go back in time to 1861, and have my picture taken with the Lincoln family at the White House. As you can see, Mary Todd and I became great buddies. We're like two peas in a pod, she and I. There on the far left in the back you'll see Robert Todd Lincoln (he's got kind of a negative attitude about everything), then in front of me is cute little Tad. Then you'll see Mary, Abe himself, and over on the far right is little Willie. In the next picture, you see that I jumped ahead to 1865 and ran into John Wilkes Booth plotting to assassinate President Lincoln! I pretended to be in on the plan with him, but then I secretly went and warned the Lincolns, so President Lincoln didn't actually get shot at Ford's Theatre, and I changed the course of history! It was quite an eventful day.
Actually, I didn't really go back in time or change history. I just posed with the various wax figures at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum up in Springfield today. Since it was such a beautiful day--the last day of summer--Catherine, Dan, and I decided to take a little road trip up to Springfield to pay homage to Illinois's hometown hero: Abe Lincoln. The weather was perfect today--sunny and warm, but not too warm, and some of the leaves are starting to change colors. You can find Lincoln sites (like the world's tallest Abe Lincoln statue here in Charleston) everywhere you go in Illinois, but you haven't seen Lincoln Land until you visit Springfield. Everything, including things that really have nothing to do with the 16th President, is geared to somehow honor the man who made Springfield famous. Catherine and Dan had never been to Springfield before, and I had never been to the Lincoln Museum, so we decided that for our enlightenment we needed to experience the museum that we have been hearing so much about. Our Museum Exhibits class teacher, Mr. Riccio, doesn't like the Lincoln Museum because he thinks it's too "Disney-fied." However, I absolutely loved it! My philosophy is that if you can make history fun for people of all ages--if you can pull them in and help them grasp historic concepts and learn about historic events and people, then you have done your job as a public historian successfully. If that means making the exhibits a little "Disney-esque" using special effects, then by all means, do it! I learned a lot and enjoyed everything about the museum. We were in there for about four hours, and I didn't even notice that it had been that long. My favorite part was this video presentation called "Ghosts of the Library." It was this awesome presentation about the importance of learning about history and preserving historical objects. They had an actor inside this glass room playing the part of the library's historian and talking about different artifacts. Then these ghostly figures of Lincoln, Civil War soldiers, etc. would fade in and out. Then, it turns out that the historian character was actually a soldier from the 33rd Illinois regiment who died at Vicksburg! He puts on his soldier's jacket, salutes the audience, and disappears into thin air while the flag of the 33rd Illinois is waving in the background! It was awesome! I can't figure out how they did that. I thought it was a pretty powerful presentation.
One of my other favorite things was something called "The Civil War in Four Minutes." They have a big movie screen with an animated map of the United States during the Civil War. The map shows the chronological order of all of the battles, and down in the corner of the screen, you see a running tally of all the casualties. The numbers keep going up so rapidly--it really hits home how many men actually died in the Civil War.
I also absolutely loved the Mary Todd Lincoln exhibit called "First Lady of Controversy." I still maintain that she wasn't actually crazy, as many people believe. I think that she was just so totally overcome with grief after all of the traumatic experiences in her life that in her later years she just kind of gave out--who wouldn't? She had a wicked step-mom when she was little, saw three of her four children die, was with her husband when he was shot--literally getting covered in his blood, and had her only surviving child put her in an insane asylum. If you ask me, that's enough to make anyone act a little crazy, but it doesn't mean she was crazy. I think she was quite the stoic woman to endure all she did throughout her life.
After the Lincoln museum, we went and walked around the Old Courthouse Square in town. We found this amazing book store--it was like I had died and gone to heaven. I tried to control myself though, and only bought a couple of books. I could have stayed in there all day looking at things, but I knew we had other places to be. After the bookstore, we went and had lunch at this funny Mexican place called El Presidente Burritos. This is one of the examples of places in Springfield that really have nothing to do with Lincoln, but they make their business establishment all about him. El Presidente had Lincoln decorations galor--right along with the pinatas (how come they didn't have a Lincoln pinata?). They had really good burritos there.
After lunch we walked over to the Abraham Lincoln Home National Historic Site. I had a chance to work as a park ranger at this site earlier this year. I got a job offer in February. Had I taken the job, I would have started in March, and my term would have lasted into November. It would have been a great place to work, but the schedule wasn't conducive to going to grad. school. Visiting Lincoln's home made me really, really, really miss being a park ranger, but maybe someday I can work at a National Park again. This is the third time I've been to the Lincoln home, but you can't visit that place too many times--it's a really neat place.
A Lincoln pilgrimage wouldn't be complete without a stop at his final resting place, so after visiting his house we went out to the Oak Ridge Cemetery to visit the Lincoln family tomb. Everybody--Abe, Mary, Eddie, Willie, and Tad--is buried there except for Robert--he's buried at the Arlington National Cemetery. We learned that President Lincoln's body isn't actually in the chamber where you think it is--he's really buried under 30 feet of concrete deep in the ground. I guess that sometime back in the late 1800's, someone tried to break in and steal Lincoln's body, so they now keep him far from the crazy people. We had really hoped to make it to the Museum of Funeral Customs that is located there at the Oak Ridge Cemetery, but by the time we were finished with all of our other stuff, the museum was closed. I guess we'll have to take another trip up sometime! We really did have a good time, and the pretty sunset while we were driving home was the icing on the cake.
After we got back I went over to Catherine's house to help her give her kitties some flea medicine, and she made some yummy pasta for us for dinner. Since she made dinner, I helped her wash her dishes, and we had fun just chatting. She and I like all of the same things! She and the other kids in the program are really cool, as are our professors, and I'm lucky to be here.
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