Laboring under fear of power outage, this is necessarily short & scattered. Happy 200th birthday to our beloved 16th President. Yesterday, we picked up the special combined February Obama Inauguration celebration edition of the Voice (Takoma Park & Silver Spring, MD). (For those who live outside the DC-area, we should explain that for a gazillion years, snarky people who think themselves clever, have referred to this area as "the Berkeley of the East" (which isn't bothersome) but really bad, The People's Republic of Takoma Park. They include Silver Spring, particularly GG's neighborhood. As human rights workers, egad, the People's Republic? As in China? Boooooo.)Anyway, in the Voice issue, there is wonderful article [a pdf file] by Jerry McCoy, tireless head of the Silver Spring Historical Society. Jerry has some wonderful SSHS information about Lincoln in GG's neighborhood. After all, we're only about 6 miles from the White House. There are some terrific illustrations & photos courtesy of SSHS & others. Meanwhile, today we intend to purchase our new Lincoln stamps. We figure the new Lincoln penny will make its way into our change purse eventually.
Reading anything by Walt Whitman would be a nice poetry tribute today--he loved Lincoln & after all, lived in DC & worked as a nurse here during the Civil War.
Also today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin--fascinating man. We cannot do him justice, but Adam Gopnik, New Yorker contributor & author pays tribute to both men in his new slim volume Angels & Ages: How Darwin & Lincoln Ushered in the Modern World. Here is a February Smithsonian magazine article adapted from the book.
ciao-meow,
GG's wind-blown editor
(GG photo collage from new USPS Lincoln postage stamps)