Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

I don't read a lot of fiction--especially supernatural fiction--but when a Facebook friend recently posted about a new book called Lincoln in the Bardo, I knew I needed to look into it. The New York Times bestseller is based around 11-year-old Willie Lincoln's death in the White House and how Abraham Lincoln reacted. But that's only part of this story. From the publisher's review:

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

I was concerned about the "terrifying" aspect because I'm not into thrillers. I was, however, intrigued by the "hilarious" aspect, and also the fact that many reviewers talked about laughing out loud one minute and crying the next. I'm all for emotional roller coasters. I decided to give the book a try.

Lincoln in the Bardo is...weird. The narrative is told from various perspectives. Some chapters are composed of eye-witness accounts (some real, some fictitious) of Abraham Lincoln and his White House, and of Willie, his illness, death, and funeral. Most of the chapters are told from the perspective of the various ghosts inhabiting Willie's cemetery. Willie himself (in ghost-form) gives some input, and we even hear the thoughts of Abraham Lincoln through the ghosts who inhabit his body when he goes to visit.

The story is as much about these other people/ghosts as it is about Abe and Willie--probably even more so--although Willie plays an important, if inadvertent, role in their lives...or afterlives. The ghosts lead seemingly mundane existences and are oblivious to (or in denial of) the fact they are dead. It took me a while to start to empathize with the three main narrator-ghosts, but eventually I became quite enthralled with them and their own struggles. By the time the book ended, I wished there were more.

As to the laughing, crying, and terror, I didn't experience any of them. There were some very touching moments, especially surrounding Willie's death, but none that made me cry (and I cry pretty easily). There were also some pretty funny parts that made me chuckle internally, but nothing that made me laugh out loud. As for terror...no. This is a supernatural story, but not a thriller by any stretch of the imagination. The ghosts aren't necessarily all friendly, but none of them are dangerous or scary. The book might keep you up at night due to heavy thought, but not due to horror (and I say that as someone with a pretty extreme fear of death).

Despite taking a while to get used to, Lincoln in the Bardo is a fairly quick read. It's also thought-provoking and remarkably heavy for also being remarkably light. Like I said, it's weird, but in a satisfying way. If you're looking for something a little different, it's definitely worth a read.

Lincoln's Gingerbread Men

During one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln told a story about gingerbread men. When he was a child, his mother made some gingerbread men and gave three of them to Abe. He took them outside, where he ran into a neighbor boy. Being a generous person, Abe gave the boy one of the cookies. The boy shoved it in his mouth and immediately asked for another. Lincoln handed another cookie over to the boy, who said something about how no one ever loved gingerbread so much and got so little of it.

I first heard that story when I was a kid, when my dad read it to me from the classic children's book Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. Ever since then, I've associated gingerbread men with Abraham Lincoln. (I mean, I don't solely associate them with him, but when I think of gingerbread men outside the context of Christmas, it's usually because of him).

So I decided that for Lincoln's birthday this year, I would make some gingerbread men--but not just any gingerbread men. These guys were going to be authentic.

See, whenever I'd envisioned this story, I imagined regular ol' gingerbread men, like the Christmas kind, but possibly without decorations. It wasn't until I read the book Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen by Rae Katherine Eighmey that I realized Lincoln's childhood cookies were far different from the ones we think of today.

Ingredients, kitchen utensils, and "appliances" would have made it unlikely that Nancy Lincoln's cookies would resemble the flat, uniform cut-outs we think of today. She wouldn't have had an oven and cookie sheets; her baking would have been done in a Dutch oven over a fire. She likely didn't have something as superfluous as a man-shaped cookie cutter. She wouldn't have had baking soda.

So Eighmey, a cook and historian, used clues and research to create a recipe she thinks better resembles the cookies Lincoln would have had (although she does substitute baking soda for the pearl ash the Lincolns would have used, and adjusted the amount of ginger based on modern availability and storage methods).

When Lincoln recounted the story, he said that his mother used sorghum in the cookies. Eighmey thought this was unusual since most gingerbread recipes of the era called for molasses (as they do today). Eighmey's recipe calls for sorghum syrup or molasses, and although I really wanted to try it with the sorghum syrup, I was unable to locate any locally. So I used molasses.

Anyway, once the dough is made, you roll out snakes of it and form people like you might with Play-Doh. In a way this was preferable to the usual rolling-and-cutting method because I hate rolling dough flat. Also, my kids could easily help me without any fights over the cookie cutter.

Here is Eighmey's recipe:

Gingerbread Men

1/2 c milk
1/2 c sorghum syrup or light or dark molasses
3 1/3 c unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tbsp packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 c (1 stick) cold salted butter

I'm going to paraphrase the instructions.

Pour the milk and syrup/molasses into a measuring cup and mix together.

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, then add the butter (in small pieces) and cut it into the flour mixture with forks or a pastry cutter. Then add the liquid and mix with a spoon or fork. I wound up stirring, then kneading it.

Take a golf-ball-sized piece of dough and work it into a long thin "snake," the circumference of a pencil and about a foot long. Break off a 4" piece and set it aside. Take the remaining piece and fold it in half, giving it a twist about an inch down. That forms the head and legs (sort of like a corn-husk doll, if you've ever made one of those). Then take the 4" strip and place it behind the "neck" to make arms. Pinch it down a little to secure it.

Bake at 325 for about 15 minutes. (I considered trying these in my Dutch oven but thought better of it.)

The recipe says it will make about 18 men, but we wound up with 24, probably because my 5-year-old, 8-year-old, and I aren't very good at measuring.

Are these the most gorgeous cookies you've ever seen? No. Are they the least? Quite possibly. I'm sure Mrs. Lincoln was far better at this. (Also, I'm not going to lie: There were several poop jokes made during the rolling-out process. Understandably.)

I worried that the cookie dough, being warm from all the handling, would spread into a giant mess in the oven, but they held their shapes beautifully and puffed more than they spread.

The final result was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. They're not very sweet and not very gingery, but they're actually pretty good--almost refreshing. These won't replace my normal Christmastime gingerbread cookies, but I'd definitely make them again for Presidents Day or something.

Be sure to check out my other presidential gingerbread recipes: Dolley Madison's and Washington/Lafayette's. If you make any of them, let me know what you think.

Abraham Lincoln Meets Teddy Roosevelt

During the school year, my 7-year-old daughter's favorite pastime was writing and illustrating stories. Sadly, she hadn't written a single thing this summer, so the other night I asked her to make me a book. The next morning, she presented me with a gift: an original story entitled "Aborham Lincon Meets Teddy Roseavelt." [sic]

In the story, Abraham Lincoln is illustrated as a ham, and Teddy Roosevelt is illustrated as a teddy bear. One would think her inspiration for the ham came from the series of paintings of presidents holding hams, but no! It was purely coincidental. In fact, she surprised me with the book mere seconds after I discovered the president/ham artwork. I consider it fate.

I thought the world would like to read her story, so I've transcribed it here. I've fixed spelling and added quotation marks and some other punctuation, but everything else (including the illustrations) is original.

***

Abraham Lincoln Meets Teddy Roosevelt

"Oh! Hi! I am Abraham Lincoln. What is your name?"
"Oh! Abraham! I found you a new friend," said George Washington.

"What!? A new friend? Cool!"

"Hi! I am Teddy Roosevelt! Are you Abracon Lincoln or something?"
"No, I am Abraham Lincoln!"
"Oh! Well hi!"

"So what do you want to do?" asked Teddy.
"What about catch?" said Albert. Albert was a very annoying bird. Never mind about him.

"Do you want to pretend we are hamsters?"
"Oh, do they sell ham there?"
"No, silly," said Abraham Lincoln.

"Get ham"

"Ya! Let's play that!"
"My name will be Ham and yours will be Teddy! Ok?"
"Sure!"

"Squeak squeak." "Oh."

Then the friends went to George's house for dinner. They first had chicken instead of ham, and pie for dessert. After dinner they went out to play catch. At last it was time to go home. They had so much fun together.

The End

***

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect the chicken they ate was Albert, the annoying bird. What do you think?

NYC History Tour, Part 2: Random Presidents and Stuff

Welcome to Part 2 of Presidentress' historical tour of New York!

You'll remember from Part 1 of my tour that people like rubbing, licking, and otherwise posing with the Bull of Wall Street's testicles. Well, across the street from the bull's balls is the old U.S. Customs House, where Chester A. Arthur served as Collector of Customs, a highly coveted position bestowed upon him thanks to the strong New York spoils system. I forgot to take a picture of it, though.

Sort of related, in the sense that it involves money and power, is where we ate lunch on the first day of our tour. There is now a Bobby Van's Steakhouse in the lobby of the old J. P. Morgan bank. In the basement, which used to be the bank's vaults, is the Vault Grill. One of the private rooms (which also does double-duty as a wine cellar) was J. P.'s own private vault, and that's where we ate. Since my love for Robber Barons rivals my love for presidents, this was an awesome experience.

We walked off our lunch by visiting several other sites, including Cooper Union, where Lincoln gave his famous Cooper Union speech.

Speaking of Lincoln, we also stopped by Gramercy Park, where there's a statue of Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes. Edwin lived in Gramercy Park and was a famous Shakespearean actor. His home is now the location of the Players Club that he founded.

I didn't get a photo of it (because I didn't realize it was there at the time), but Samuel Tilden also owned a house in Gramercy Park. You'll remember Tilden from such disputes as the Election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877. Also from the cake I made a couple months ago. Tilden's house is now home to the National Arts Club and is located just a couple doors down from Edwin Booth's old abode.

We also stopped by the New York Police Department's former headquarters, where Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner. The building now contains private condos, so we couldn't go in.

Then we walked by Roosevelt's childhood home, which we also couldn't go into because it's closed for renovations. (Thankfully we knew this ahead of time or else I would have been crushed.)

Our next stop was Tammany Hall, home of the famous/infamous political machine. Most recently it served as an art school, but apparently it is now undergoing major renovations as well.

We also somewhat unexpectedly stumbled upon a statue of William Seward. Seward was Secretary of State under Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and is probably best known for Seward's Folly, or the

purchase of Alaska. What many people don't know is that he was also targeted for assassination the night Lincoln was killed.

John Wilkes Booth's plan was that while he was busy killing Lincoln, two other people would kill Secretary of State Seward and Vice President Johnson, thus upending the Executive Branch. Only one of the plots wound up successful. The guy who was supposed to kill Johnson chickened out, and Lewis Powell, the guy who was supposed to kill Seward, tried but failed. His gun misfired, so he wound up pistol-whipping Seward's son and then stabbed Seward several times, but Seward survived. (If you want to learn more about Seward and the assassination attempt, make sure to read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I can't wait to hunt down the Seward Plaque in D.C.)

I did a little more digging and learned that there was some controversy surrounding Seward's statue. The same sculptor had previously created a statue of Lincoln, and some people claim that the artist simply recycled Lincoln's body and slapped Seward's head on top.

Incidentally, my New York friend said that people often steal the quill from Seward's hand, so we were lucky to find it intact.

And speaking of statues, on Day Two of our tour, we hit (figuratively) Columbia University and saw

the building where Lou Gehrig used to hit (literally) Columbia University. (There were no baseball fields, so he did the best he could, which involved accidentally breaking windows with his home runs.) That area is just a stone's throw (if you're Gehrig) from a forlorn statue of Thomas Jefferson.

Apparently the statue, bequeathed by the estate of Joseph Pulitzer, was supposed to be installed in New York's City Hall Park near a statue of Nathan Hale. But Hale's sculptor didn't want another statue there, so the plan was foiled. Instead, the Jefferson's statue was relegated to a courtyard in front of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, where it's not visible from the street and no one but J-School grad students and weird people searching for presidential relics will find it. Poor Thomas.

Apparently there is also a statue of Alexander Hamilton on the Columbia campus, but I didn't learn about that until just now, so I didn't seek it out.

After Jefferson, we walked several blocks to Grant's Tomb. My New York friend had never been inside so it was something new for all of us. The building itself is lovely, but it's surrounded by a strange art installment: a series of garish mosaic benches that pay homage to everything from Smokey Bear to seahorses. They were cool but felt out of place at Grant's Tomb.

Anyway, I'm a big Grant fan, so it was nice to be able to pay my respects. (Yeah, "paying respects" and taking a selfie...they don't have to be mutually exclusive.)

My BFF and I also attended a Broadway show and afterward we met Jeff Daniels, one of my very favorite actors. I'm including that tidbit here partly to brag but also because I've featured Jeff Daniels in two presidential-ish Separated at Births: William Jennings Bryan and William Henry Harrison.

William Jennings Bryan/Jeff Daniels

William Henry Harrison/Jeff Daniels

Thus concludes Presidentress' historical tour of New York. There are dozens and dozens of other presidential (and related) sites I didn't get to see, so I might need to go back. If you're in the area, seek out some of the places I've mentioned here, and feel free to share your finds. Happy travels!

Abrahamster Lincoln

Cute animal videos are all the rage, so I figured I'd combine people's love of furry creatures with one of our greatest presidents. It just seemed natural.

So sit back and enjoy Abrahamster Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. You're welcome.

Special thanks to my cousin Christina and her hamster, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. No animals were harmed. Humiliated, maybe, but not harmed.

Hands off Lincoln's Nose?

When I was 10, my dad and I drove from Chicago to Disney World. Along the way we made several stops, including Springfield, Illinois, to see Lincoln's tomb. My dad had been there before, but it was new to me, so I was surprised when I saw the bust outside Lincoln's tomb. It looked like any old statue, really, except that the nose was bright and shiny. My dad explained that people rubbed the nose for good luck, so I did, too.

It's unclear how the practice got started. It seems that rubbing statues' noses in general is considered good luck, and Lincoln is a popular guy. It does seem a bit weird, though, as Lincoln wasn't exactly the luckiest guy in the world. Yeah, he won the Civil War (the bloody, devastating Civil War), but he also lost his mother at a young age, buried two children, and, you know, got assassinated, hence the bust outside his tomb.

But whatever. I find it a delightful, if strange, tradition.

This morning my 6-year-old asked me if Lincoln had a shiny nose in real life. (I told her probably not.) She knows all about the nose because we've been to Lincoln's tomb a couple times, and because we live in Illinois where tributes to Lincoln are as common as Starbucks. Many of those Tributes come in statue or plaque form, and if the nose is accessible, it will be rubbed.

We encountered this plaque at a state park nowhere near Springfield a few months ago. You can see that the nose is significantly shinier than the rest of it.

You should never pass up an opportunity to rub Lincoln's nose. Or should you?

Apparently not everyone is happy about the tradition. An angry columnist from Springfield's newspaper is mad that people are leaving pennies at the statue and the tomb. He, and a cemetery worker, find it "tacky." In my four visits there I've never seen any pennies, so maybe it was a short-lived fad (the column is from 2013). But leaving coins on graves---any grave, not just Lincoln's---is something people do, isn't it? This columnist is also up in arms about people rubbing the nose, because apparently you aren't supposed to.

Then I felt bad. Have we been defacing Lincoln's face? Should we stop? So I looked for some warnings online, because there certainly aren't any at the tomb itself. The website for the Lincoln Tomb Monument Association has no warning against rubbing Abe's nose. The Lincoln's Tomb page at Oak Ridge Cemetery's website makes no mention of keeping one's hands off. In fact, the first image on the cemetery's home page is a photo of a person rubbing Lincoln's nose. It doesn't exactly seem like anyone's trying to discourage the rubbing, except Mr. Angry Springfieldian.

I did find some information about how in the 1970s the Illinois State Historical Society worried that the constant rubbing would erode Abe's nose, so they raised the bronze bust to make it harder to reach. Frustrated schoolchildren wrote letters of complaint, and the bust was restored to its regular height shortly thereafter. And apparently today, caretakers have a stepstool available for kids (or short adults) who need a boost to reach the nose. If they're trying to keep people's hands off, they're not doing a very good job communicating it.

I would hope that if the bust truly is in danger of being destroyed, they'll put it off-limits for good. Maybe they can use those pesky pennies and $5 bills being left at the tomb to help fund something.

So, until I'm told otherwise I'll keep rubbing Lincoln's nose whenever I see one. It might not bring me luck, but it brings me a little happiness.

Follow Presidentress on Twitter @MsPresidentress

I made a Twitter account for Presidentress a few weeks ago when I learned there's a guy who tweets as Richard Nixon, just like Nixon would if he were alive and tweeting, though probably with fewer expletives.

I didn't do much with the account until a few nights ago when I time-delay-tweeted about the most recent Republican debate. But being a relative Twitter neophyte, I forgot to hashtag. Oh well.

I did get a couple retweets anyway, like about my observation: Marco Rubio is like the guy who looks like he'd be the life of the party, then turns out to be a major buzzkill.

Anyway, if you don't want to miss out on gems like that for future debates, follow Presidentress @MsPresidentress. (Someone had already taken @Presidentress and numerous variations thereof.)

And if you're on Facebook, make sure to follow there as well. Facebook.com/Presidentress. I post lots of fun Facebook-exclusive content, like Abraham Lincoln sitting on a Coke bottle. Good times.

Presidentress' Night at the Museum

The Presidentress Family decided to end the summer with a bang, by visiting South Bend, Indiana.

South Bend had not been on my extensive and mostly unvisited list of destinations for this summer, but my dad (you'll remember him from the Barry Bostwick debacle) was there a couple weeks ago and raved about its Studebaker museum. He said that besides old cars, they had an exhibit about Lincoln's death, carriages that belonged to several presidents, plus an exhibit about the All-American Girl's Professional Baseball League. It definitely sounded like something I needed to see, so I moved South Bend to the top of my list.

The visit was...interesting. (If you want to learn about presidential carriages, keep reading. If you want to get to the part where we wind up trapped in the museum, scroll down under the terrible photo of us "dressed" as female baseball players.)

First, I screwed up. We got off to a late start because we didn't even decide to go to South Bend until after our late breakfast. Even so, and even after stopping for lunch, I figured we'd make it by 2:30, giving us plenty of time to take in the museum before it closed at 5:00. Except I forgot that most of Indiana---including South Bend, apparently---is in the Eastern time zone, meaning we lost an hour on the way and didn't really arrive until 3:30.

I also didn't know that the museum was actually two museums in the same building. The cars and presidential carriages were in one museum; the baseball stuff was in the other. That meant I had to decide whether to just see one museum (and if so, which?), or pay extra for both. The guy at the admission desk said people usually need an hour and a half just for one museum, but we could get through each one in 45 minutes if we didn't stop to read everything. With three kids in tow, I figured we'd be lucky if we got to read anything, so we opted for both.

We motored (see what I did there?) over to the Studebaker side first. I'd like to tell you all about the history of the Studebaker company and all their many innovative vehicles, but since we were short on time and not allowed to read anything, I skimmed and skipped over most of the descriptions. There were some cool things, though. Trust me.

The exhibit on Lincoln's death mainly consisted of blown-up photographs and masks of his face (i.e., stuff I've seen before), but there were some less-common artifacts, like John Wilkes Booth's ticket stub to Ford's Theater.

The pièce de résistance, of course, was a carriage that Lincoln took to the theater that fateful night. The carriage was later painted over several times, but restoration work has brought back its original color and Lincoln's initials on the side.

Just a few steps away were three carriages belonging to other presidents: Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley. As far as carriages go, they look like pretty much any other: black and...carriagey. McKinley's is distinctive not in style, but in the fact that he took it to the train station in Canton, Ohio, where he caught the train that took him to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where he met his doom. Yes, the Studebaker museum has two carriages that presidents rode to their deaths!

After looking at some cars, we scurried over to the history museum. We started with an exhibit about transportation on the first floor, then went down to the basement to see the more-local stuff and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League exhibit.

We took this awful photo (Mr. Presidentressor said that he looks like a corpse from one of those Victorian death photos where they prop up dead people and pose them in normal situations). Then we wandered through the rest of the exhibits.

At one point I looked at my phone and saw it was 4:40, meaning we had 20 minutes left. I was fairly sure we were toward the end, so I felt confident we would make it. Around that same time, my 6-year-old told me she couldn't wait to step through the "time portal." She was pointing at a tunnel-like entrance into the next room, and I decided she was my favorite child of the day.

Anyway, about five minutes later, just as Anna had finally stepped into the time portal, we were suddenly plunged into darkness. Anna freaked out, wondering if she really had gone into a portal. The 11-year-old, who doesn't handle change well, started freaking out, and the 3-year-old was MIA.

Mr. Presidentressor and I activated the flashlights on our phones and located all the kids. We also realized the museum was very quiet, indicating we were the only people in the basement. I checked my phone again, wondering if somehow it was already 5:00, but saw that it was only 4:46. We assumed there was a power outage.

I wasn't sure if it would be quicker to go back the way we had come or to continue the way we had been heading. Feeling adventurous, we plunged into the unknown, through the time portal. I'm not entirely sure what was in that next room since it was completely black, but my flashlight/phone did pass over a few old-fashioned baby carriages, which are some of the most horrifying things one can find in a strange, dark room.

The next couple rooms contained other items randomly illuminated by my phone, including a plow and an old-fashioned bathtub. I'm sure there were tons of other things, too, but we didn't get to enjoy them. Because we couldn't see.

We finally made it back to the baseball room. But, in true horror-movie fashion, there was no way out. Seriously, the stairs we had come down were gone. The only way out appeared to be an elevator but we didn't attempt to use it because, remember, we thought the museum had lost power. I looked around in confusion, then remembered that the first thing I had seen upon coming down the stairs was that cut-out-photo-thing. I looked opposite it and saw a set of solid double doors, closed tight. I gave one a push and luckily it opened.

When we got upstairs, Mr. Presidentressor asked if there had been a power outage. One of the employees nonchalantly said, "No, the lights are on a timer and sometimes they go off early."

We thought that was a pretty lame answer. I confirmed with him that the museum doesn't close until 5, and he said yes but kind of shrugged it off and said our tickets were good for the next day, too, if we wanted to come back. We told him we were only in town for the afternoon. He offered to have someone turn the lights back on, but by that point it was almost 5:00, plus we now had three terrified kids to deal with, so we decided to pass.

I'm not sure I buy his explanation about the timer. If that's really the case, they should probably set it for a time well after closing so they can, you know, make sure no one is trapped in the building. It's more likely someone was too lazy to check the basement before closing up. Or maybe we can blame it on the ghost of William McKinley.

Babe Lincoln

It's never too early to start planning for Halloween, and thanks to a bout of insomnia the other night, that's exactly what I'm doing.

I couldn't sleep, so naturally I turned to the internet. One thing led to another and I found myself reading one of my favorite blogs, which I've mentioned here before: Hottest Heads of State. They have a post called "Head of State Halloween Costumes." Although there are some fantastic ideas to be found in that post, my real inspiration came from a product they linked to: a Sexy Abraham Lincoln Costume.

We've all noticed this growing and rather disgusting trend in women's Halloween costumes. A woman can't be a nurse; she has to be a sexy nurse. She can't be a cupcake; she has to be a sexy cupcake. She can't be a nuclear physicist; she has to be a sexy nuclear physicist. Following that logic, any costume a woman wears should be a sexy one, and Sexy Lincoln delivers.

When I clicked over to the costume, I was ecstatic for a split second...until I noticed that the online catalog "selling" the costume is actually another humor site run by the same people who run Hottest Heads of State. In other words, I can't really buy the costume because it doesn't exist. (Side note: if you're looking to procrastinate at work today, spend some time browsing Air Splurge.)

I don't give up that easily, though. I googled "sexy abraham lincoln costume" because I don't use the shift key when googling, and I found that some people have already done the Sexy Lincoln thing. There's this woman (second one down) who dressed as "Baberaham Lincoln," and these people who dressed as Sexy Abraham Lincoln and Hot Wilkes Booth. Have people no shame?

But yeah, I'm totally dressing as Babe Lincoln this year, even though it has just occurred to me that it might not be the most appropriate or comfortable costume to wear while taking my kids trick-or-treating, especially if we have near-negative windchills like last year. It's a sacrifice I'll make for my country, though.

Who REALLY Killed Lincoln?

A few days ago, my friend Becky gave me an Edgar Allan Poe finger puppet. This was cool, because it's an Edgar Allan Poe finger puppet. But it's also cool because when we went to the Abraham Lincoln museum, my 3-year-old chose Lincoln and Grant finger puppets as his souvenir for the day, so it was nice to be able to add another puppet to the mix.

Sure enough, when I handed Poe to my son, he ran off to go find Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. He played with the three puppets for a minute, then stuck them all together with the magnets in their heads and left them on the coffee table. A while later my 10-year-old walked by and saw the new puppet. "Oh, is that John Wilkes Booth?" he asked.

Of course my son's comment made me realize that with a Lincoln puppet and a Booth doppelgänger, I had the ability--nay, the responsibility--to use my children's other toys to recreate that tragic evening at Ford's Theater.

I was also reminded of a passage from Sarah Vowell's book Assassination Vacation, in which she visits sites related to the first three presidential assassinations. In one part, she's visiting Booth's grave in Baltimore after having just been to Poe's grave across town, and she's musing about the similarities between the two men. Besides both having lived in Baltimore, and both having similar dark, brooding appearance, they were both the sons of actors and both spent significant time in Richmond, Virginia. Booth was shot by federal agents after having killed Lincoln. Poe died after an election day likely spent as a "repeater," someone hired to vote repeatedly for particular candidates. Vowell says, "In other words, both Booth and Poe died thwarting the will of the electorate."

My Favorite Presidents

You'd think "Who's your favorite president?" is something I get asked a lot, but it isn't. Mostly people ask "Why presidents?" in the same incredulous tone they use when asking why I moved from Southern California to Northern Illinois.

So, you didn't ask but I'm going to answer anyway, about my favorite president at least. (As for why the obsession, I have no answer. As for the California-Illinois thing, that's a discussion for another day.)

The truth is that I have a few favorites. In no particular order, they are:

Abraham Lincoln

This one seems kind of obvious. When people discuss the greatest presidents, Lincoln is always at or near the top, although I don't see how he can ever be rated lower than number one. Abraham Lincoln is like Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player of all time. Not Mantle, not Mays, not Williams, not DiMaggio. It's Ruth. And it's Lincoln. It just is.

That's not to say that "the best" always has to be "the favorite" (Babe Ruth isn't my favorite baseball player), but Lincoln is definitely part of the three-way tie for my favorite.

Theodore Roosevelt

I'm a little conflicted on TR's presidency because I'm not just a fan of presidents; I'm also a fan of turn-of-the-century business moguls. (I totally need to make another blog called RobberBaroness.com.) Teddy as Trust-Buster caused some of my favorite historical figures to be pitted against one another, and that's uncomfortable but also kind of awesome. He was more hawkish than I'd like, but his administration did result in several important reforms.

More than anything, though, he was a fascinating human being. The guy taxidermied his own animals as a kid. He wrote several books, including a history of the War of 1812, just for fun. He overcame severe asthma to become a star athlete, and was partially blinded in one eye while boxing...when he was president. And there was the whole Rough Rider thing. And he was president. And so very, very, very much more. 

The guy was truly the most interesting man in the world. Wait, I feel a meme coming on.

There we go.

William Howard Taft

Remember I said that "favorite" and "best" don't always align? No one will ever accuse Taft of being among the greatest presidents, and it's not Taft's presidency that landed him on this list. Instead, it's because of his character, and also because I've always felt bad for him. Everyone knows he's the "fat guy," but most people don't know he was also Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (after he was president). Supreme Court Justice is the role he always aspired to, and he sort of got thrust into the whole presidential thing against his will. He didn't like acting as a politician and he didn't want to be president. In many ways, he was too principled to succeed in politics, which is probably why he didn't.