Drawing No. 2105 ― Sasquatch moving to higher ground

by Jack Brummet

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Drawing No. 2104 — Sasquatch pay their respects at the Lincoln Memorial

by Jack Brummet

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The hanging of the Lincoln assassination conspirators

by Jack Brummet

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Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln a/k/a Lanky Link

By Pablo Fanque, Presidents Ed.

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Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial (with footnote on Guerrillero Heroico)

By Jack Brummet, Latin America Ed.

In April 1959, Alfredo Korda [1]  shot this photograph of Fidel Castro, the new leader of Cuba, laying a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.

This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder allows anyone to use it, provided it is not used to denigrate the Cuban revolution

Castro admired Abraham Lincoln and kept a bust of him in his office.  He once wrote about Lincoln's devotion “to the just idea that all citizens are born free and equal."

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[1] Korda also shot one of the most famous images of all time—Guerrillero Heroico—the shot of Ernesto Che Guevara at a memorial.  According to the Wikipedia page about this photo, "To take the photo, Korda used a Leica M2 with a 90 mm lens, loaded with Kodak Plus-X pan film. In speaking about the method, Korda humbly remarked that  'this photograph is not the product of knowledge or technique. It was really coincidence, pure luck.' "

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Happy birthday, Abraham Lincoln (with ten favorite quotes and seven photos and illustrations of Link)

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

Happy birthday to Link!  

Favorite Link quotes:

• “My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.” 

• "It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.”  (Often attributed to P.T. Barnum)

• “There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.” 

• “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” 

• “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.” 

• “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” 

• “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” 

• “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” 

• “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” 

• “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” 

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Remembering mainframe ASCII printouts (with images of Lincoln, Marilyn, Mickey Mouse, Mona Lisa, Jack B)

By Jack Brummet, Technology Ed.

I took a tour of some large company with a main frame computer sometime in the mid- to late-60's.  We saw the tapes and punchcards, cooling systems, reports, etc.  What really stuck in my mind--and they knew this was a hit with visitors--were the ASCII images they generated programmatically and then printed out on their chain/line printers.  I remember seeing a Marilyn and an Abe Lincoln, among other images.

You don't see these much anymore, now than we can print high definition images.  But, like all good retro technologies, there are people out there keeping it alive.  You can create your own ASCII images using one of several on line image generators.  I created the one of myself on the Ascii art Generator website at http://asciiart.ca/.

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POTUS Abraham Lincoln: a night to remember

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A maintenance man rappels down Lincoln's nose

Provenance and photographer unknown.

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Coincidences? JFK & Abe Lincoln

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

I don't know if you remember this ancient (pre-meme) meme, but here it is, slightly updated...

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The contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets the night he was assassinated

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

Courtesy of the Library of Congress digital archives. . .a photo of the items that were in Abraham Lincoln's pockets the night he was assassinated.  Interestingly, the contents include a pocket knife and a confederate five dollar bill.

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Lanky Link: Abraham Lincoln's many losses along the way to the White House

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

• When he was 22, his business failed. 
• At age 23, he lost a bid for U.S. Congress. 
• The next year, another business he started went under.
• Finally at age 25, he was elected to the state legislature. 
• When he was 26, his girlfriend died. 
• At 27, he had a nervous breakdown. 
• When Lincoln was 29, he was beaten in the race for the post of Speaker of the House Illinois legislature. 
• When he was 31, he was defeated as an Elector (you, know - the electoral college). 
• At age 34, he was beaten when he ran for congress, 
• When he was 37, he ran for Congress once again and won, but, alas, two years later, he was not re-elected.  When he was 46, he ran for the Senate and lost. 
• The next year year, he ran for Vice President and lost. 
• At the age of 51, he was elected President of the United States.

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Four interesting photos of Abraham Lincoln from the Library of Congress Archives

by Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

Photographs courtesy of The Library of Congress (your tax dollars at work!)

1846

1860

1864

1865

And one not from the Library of Congress, but from the Pundit Kitchen:

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Happy Birthday to Lanky Link!

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Editor

Happy Birthday to President Abraham Lincoln, a President most of us (above the Mason-Dixon line) think is one of the greats.   Sadly, his birthday has been largely subsumed into "President's Day," which is officially, and actually, just George Washington's birthday.

Some of our favorite photos and drawings of Abe:

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Abe Lincoln, Paranormal Investigator

Thanks for the picture and caption to Dean Ericksen!

This explains what we've always sensed.   Abraham Lincoln's haunted look comes straight from from his heavy paranormal baggage.

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From PunditKitchen.com : How would Abraham "Lanky Link" Lincoln fare in the media these days?

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Painting: Link a/k/a Abraham Lincoln

click Link to enlarge...

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Five images of Abraham Lincoln

click to enlarge

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President's Day -- Poppa George and Lanky Link: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln built the (now demonized) Republican Party into a strong national organization and brought the northern Democrats into the Union fold. With little choice, he went to war against his own countrymen.

In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves in the Confederacy. In reality, that would take a while, and many people think we're still working at it. He made a few jokes about his face, and truth be told, in many of those daguerreotypes he looks like he is carrying the weight of the world.

The contemporary painter Mark Ryden often includes an image of Lincoln in his paintings. Abe never got to fully preside over the peace, because he was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by a deranged actor and supreme P.O.S., John Wilkes Boothe.



More nonsense has been written about Washington than any other President (except the conspiracy theories around Jack Kennedy and LBJ, about whom more even gibberish has been written because his murder, and LBJ's alleged role in the "conspiracy" literally sparked an industry of conspiracy theorists.

Did young George chop down the cherry tree? Was he lying when he said "Father, I cannot tell a lie," which may be the biggest whopper of all time? "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree," George says when asked by his father. This story elevated him into the pantheon and onto Rushmore. It is also bunk, bogus, hokum, flim-flam::::::::::100% ca-ca. Parson Mason Locke Weems concocted the story in a biography of Washington. In The Moral Washington: Construction of a Legend Weems wanted to humanize Washington after a less than flattering earlier biography of him as 'cold and colorless." Weems book was very popular with the public and they equated Washington with honesty.

Did he wear wooden teeth? No. He actually had hippopotamus teeth--from rarely visited Africa. How they became his teeth is a mystery.

His tight-lipped grimace is often attributed to the wooden teeth. We do know that his false teeth has springs that made them adhere in place, but that is not the reason for the tight-lipped grin.

The raconteur, humorist, and radio legend Jean Shepherd talked about Washington on his Washington birthday show on February 22, 1973. Shep tried to bust a few of the myths around The General. In particular, some of the notions that have arisen from Gilbert Stuart's portraits.

We remember President Washington as tight lipped and aloof because as Gilbert Stuart wrote "When I painted him, he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face." However, we now know that Stuart disliked George Washington and many people speculate this led to the tight lipped portrait, as well as the air of aloofness we sense in Washington. Stuart also wrote that when he would sit for him: "an apathy seemed to seize him, and a vacuity spread over his countenance, most appalling to paint."

Thanks to the portraits, we also think of him as a dandified man, wearing flouncy shirts, an ornate doublet and knickers. We think of his hair as being bright white. As was the fashion at the time, that was a powdered wig!

We tend to also think of him as a genteel and gentle man of restraint (again, partly due to the portraits). However, he was a man of large appetites who enjoyed copious flagons of Madeira wine (and would have no doubt enoyed bourbon, had it been invented yet). He was not afraid to take a another officer out for a round of fisticuffs, and usually won. Martha Washington indicated in more than one letter to friends that "George is at it again," which some have speculated refers to extramarital affairs.

George was a big man. In that time, the average height of a Continental Army soldier was five foot six inches. George Washington stood six foot, two inches. He was literally a giant among men.

Washington was also an incredible horseman, by all accounts, both in peace- and in war-time. He was a strong man, and tough as nails, as he showed in the war, living under-equipped in the appalling climate of Valley Forge and the other battles of the revolution.

Washington State is the only state named for a President. When I grew up in the 50's and 60's, Washington's birthday was still a state holiday (before that abomination known as President's Day). On February 22, in celebration of the event, cherry pies were on sale in the stores and at bake sales by the Rotary, the Civitan Club, Kiwanis, and others.
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Painting: Lanky Link, a/k/a President Abraham Lincoln

click Link to enlarge

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