American

Convict me of dandelions

and large puddles of ketchup,

the June scent of Scioto rain.

At breakfast I get drunk on Bach,

with a chaser of Copland and Joplin,

hotdogs from a cart, by noon.

Find me guilty of eating at the kitchen sink,

ordering drive-thru McDonald's fries―

you shotgun, me in a Stetson.

I pretend to hate mosquitoes on the Fourth of July―

come at me with sparklers, buckeyes,

those little American flags stapled to sticks.

I want to pursue our life, liberty, and happiness,

but there's something you should know―

I love A. Lincoln, shamelessly.

tk/May 2013 


R.A.D. Stainforth...a rare step out of his black and white world...

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Self-evident

Convict me of dandelions,
large puddles of ketchup,
June scent of Scioto rain.

At breakfast I get drunk on Bach,
chasers of Copland and Joplin,
hotdogs from a cart by noon.

Find me guilty of eating at the kitchen sink,
ordering drive-thru McDonald's fries ―
you shotgun, me in a Stetson.

I pretend to hate mosquitoes on the Fourth of July ―
come at me with sparklers, buckeyes,
little American flags stapled to sticks.

I want to pursue our life, liberty, and happiness,
but there's something you should know ―
I love A. Lincoln, shamelessly.

tk/May 2013

Thanks to  R.A.D. Stainforth for this excellent read.

Lighthouse Dandelions by JamieWyeth 

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On Turning Fifty-Six

R.A.D. Stainforth's excellent read

It's the sum
of the first six

triangular numbers,

some kind of

Stonehenge black magic,

being born in '56,

then turning it.

Somebody said,

"Watch your back,

both Abe and Adolf

were shot in the head

at fifty-six ―

both the good and bad

could be targeted."

My Alice was good,

leader of a certain world,

hers no less tragic,

dead at the same age.

But I should be okay ―

my name doesn't begin

with the pyramid A,

I'll avoid theaters,

packing,

and most of all,

politics.

tk, October 2012

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me, October, 2012 

will the real mr. lincoln...

February is a month full of the birthdays of my favorite people. My oldest son was born February 1st, Edna St. Vincent Millay's is February 22 and one of my personal heroes, Abraham Lincoln, on the 12th. That's the president, I'm talking about, Abe, although I do like you a lot, too. Did you know we have a distant cousin of the president here in our blog community? His name also happens to be Abraham Lincoln, named after his well-known cousin. 

Remember last year when I posted about Steven Spielberg's film project, Lincoln, and Liam Neeson was to portray the famous president?  Neeson is fine, but I highly recommended Daniel Day-Lewis, who not only looks like Lincoln, but I'm convinced would actually become Lincoln for the role.  Well, it looks as if he took my advice. Daniel Day-Lewis will, indeed, play Lincoln in the upcoming film. Thanks, Mr. Spielberg, you were reading my blog, weren't you?

(click to enlarge-- this photo is amazing)

Just to refresh your memory, several other actors have played Lincoln through the years.  I would venture to say that everyone's favorite is most likely Henry Fonda in John Ford's 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln. Fonda does a wonderful job as the shy, contemplative and clever young Lincoln.

Raymond Massey played Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, 1940. There was a great public outcry when this Canadian was chosen to play the great American president, but Massey scored high reviews on Broadway and later for the film version of Robert E. Sherwood's play. I don't know about you, but Massey has a scary quality about him. I just can't shake the image of Johnathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace.

Speaking of scary qualities, although I haven't seen this one personally, John Carradine played Lincoln in the 1938 film Of Human Hearts. It's safe to say Carradine has that Lincolnesque thing going on, the deep set eyes and craggy features, but I see him more as Count Dracula. A blood sucking Lincoln just isn't right.

Spielberg's Lincoln is based on the excellent book (I've got a copy in my little manor library) Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and focuses on the political collision of Lincoln and his cabinet after the Civil War.

Filming for this project is to start this fall, with the release scheduled next year.

skeleton leaves & stereoscopes

After my recent post on doppelgängers, in which I included an image
of a stereoview card of Lincoln, my sweet artist friend, Suki, was
kind enough to surprise me with one of my very own! The vintage
stereoview card she sent, pictured below, (click to enlarge) shows a
lacy funerary arrangement of skeleton leaves, in memory of
Abraham Lincoln.

After the death of Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Albert, in 1861,
funeral art became quite an elaborate fashion. Skeleton leaves,
those from which the pulpy part has been removed by chemical
means, and the fibrous part alone remaining, have been an element
of artistic design for years. They're also known as "phantom
flowers", a perfect ingredient to a frilly Victorian death memorial.

I'm sure you've seen these wonderful bits of vintage ephemera, the
stereoview cards, with dual images side by side. They were slipped
in the rear tray of a stereoscope and viewed through an eyepiece,
creating the illusion of depth, similar to the perspectives that both
eyes naturally receive in binocular vision, or 3-D. The stereoscope
was an early version of my beloved little red plastic Viewmaster.
Oh, the hours of complete bliss, clicking away to the magical land of
Sleeping Beauty, and visiting far off places like the Grand Canyon.


Thank you so much, Suki. You know how nutty I am, not only for
Lincoln, but for wonderful vintage ephemera, as well. If you're not
familiar with this talented, red beret clad little lady, pop over to her
artsy blog, Paint, Poems and Ponderings and say hello. Tell her
Willow sent you.
.
photos: skeleton leaves click [here] for source
stereoscope and viewmaster from google images

doppelgänger

Poetikat used the delightful word doppelgänger in a wonderful haiku last week. I commented how much I liked the word and she quickly suggested I should post on the subject. After doing a bit of research, I found the word to be even more intriguing than I first thought.

dop·pel·gäng·er, noun

Etymology: German Doppelgänger,
from doppel- double + -gänger goer

Date: 1851

1 : a ghostly counterpart of a living person
2 a : double
2 b : alter ego
2 c : a person who has the same name as another

In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person. Well, you know, I couldn't let this pass without mentioning the Deppster and me. The jury is still out on whether we share the same Cherokee great-great-grandmother. We do, however, look quite a lot alike. I guess it's safe to say he and I, though we might not actually be cousins, we most definitely are doppelgängers.

The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance it could have been a reflection. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.

Since I am a huge Lincoln buff, the story of the president seeing his own doppelgänger caught my attention. Here is an excerpt from Carl Sandburg's biography:


A dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln at times through the winter. On the evening of his election he had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of November 7 had told him he was elected President, and
looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faces.

It bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up again, mixed in the election
excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too.

A few days later he tried it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death
pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.


Spooky, huh? But, Lincoln was known to be superstitious, and old mirrors can be known to produce double images. Whether this Janus illusion can be counted as a doppelgänger is perhaps debatable. An alternate consideration, suggests that Lincoln suffered vertical strabismus in his left eye, a disorder which could induce visions of a vertically displaced image.

For the accounts of other famous reports of doppelgängers, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Donne, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Emilie Sagée click [HERE].

Not Lincoln?

Marking the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln this past week,
brought to mind some of the actors who have portrayed the great
president over the years. I would venture to say that everyone's
favorite is most likely Henry Fonda in John Ford's 1939 Young
Mr. Lincoln. Fonda does a wonderful job as the shy, contemplative
and clever young Lincoln.

Then there's Raymond Massey, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. There was
a great public outcry when this Canadian was chosen to play the great
American president, but scored high reviews on Broadway and later
in 1940 for the film version of Robert E. Sherwood's play. I don't
know about you, but Massey has a scary quality about him and I just
can't shake the image of Johnathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace.

And talking about scary qualities, John Carradine also played Lincoln
in the 1938 film Of Human Hearts. I guess you could say that he has
that Lincolnesque thing going on, but I always see him more as
Dracula. A blood sucking Lincoln just isn't right.

Did you hear that Steven Speilberg is working on a new film titled
Lincoln coming out in 2011, starring Liam Neeson as Abraham
Lincoln? I adore Neeson and I'm sure he will be fabulous in the
role, but my first choice would have been the magnificent Daniel
Day-Lewis. He most definitely has that "Lincoln thing" and I'm
convinced, after seeing him hauntingly take on the person of the
roles he has portrayed in other films, he would become Lincoln.