Lincoln's Blog

Mr. Sophanne and I don't do the cell phone thing. We both work in rural areas that get spotty service at best. While we are both relatively intelligent people (proof- I remembered Harper Lee's name in a crossword puzzle today), we can't bring ourselves to negotiate the literacy level of cell phone contracts.

When we went on vacation we needed a phone. I'm a big fan of the trac phone- pre-pay, 800 minutes for the next year (some sort of special double your minutes offer) and fuhget about it until the next year. Little did I know at the time of purchase that trac phones now have cameras!

This weekend I found myself in Gettysburg, PA by way of Mountain Mama's house. While packing and getting ready to go it didn't occur to me to add the camera. Once there I realized what an error I had made. Fortunately I did have the cell phone.

We didn't have time (or honestly deep interest) in the actual historical sites of the city. Instead we opted for a quick walk through the touristy trap shops.

The anachronistic nature of this area was not lost on me. "Lincoln's Bus Lines" and the sign that said "This parking reserved for Horse Soldier patrons only" were two of my favorites. Also funny to me was the "word on the street" that Steven Spielberg had just been to the Dobbin House for research on a movie about Lincoln. I walked right past the hotel where Steven Spielberg saw where Abraham Lincoln slept!

Here is Mountain Mama Lincoln




Here I am peeking out of the Chaplain's quarters at a fake encampment.



And although I don't have a great interest in the details of American History (c'mon you know I'm not the only one), I do have a great respect for wise thoughts and wise words in dire times so I will try to class up this post a little bit by ending with the Gettysburg Address (as copied from Wikipedia). Some words indeed are timeless.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.