NOTHING NEW TO AMERICA

 A short note tonight, perhaps an optimistic one, for our American society. I just finished the first volume of Hay and Nicolay's biography of Abraham Lincoln. They were secretaries to him during his time in the White House, and Hay later came back as the Secretary of State for McKinley, so these two men actually knew and worked with Lincoln, as opposed to how many biographers on the subject? I read it to learn more about Lincoln, but it had the side effect of teaching me about the events leading up to the Civil War.

What I want to bring to your attention, though, is the part of this volume that deals with how Kansas got its start. I really, really recommend reading at least this part to any American reading this. I understand that it's not going to be pleasant for most. History books rarely are. But I think it offers us a little bit of sunshine on a rainy, say, four years.

All the political chaos we're going through right now? It doesn't hold a candle to what we went through in the 1850s. At the very least we don't have slavery in play right now. I mean, that could change at any moment, and I'm almost certain that the endgame for our corporate overlords is to bring slavery back, but this time to let it be colorblind. That's a story for another day, though.

We're supremely lucky that the federal government is terrible at being Nazis. They're more like the Hogan's Heroes version. Because if they were good at it, we'd be living in the days when people were literally murdering people on the opposite political aisle from them. Wholesale murder. Enough to make the practitioners serial killers.

Read this. It's mostly the last few chapters, but it will give you an idea of how horrendous things got before the Civil War, and it might give us some insight into avoiding the Civil War 2: War Harder. It will also tell you what they didn't teach you in elementary school: that slavery wasn't just a thing the South wanted to continue doing. They envisioned a slavery empire. Let the North have their dinky free states. The South wasn't going to stop at stealing Texas from the Mexicans. They wanted to steal Mexico from the Mexicans. And Central America. They wanted their slavery paradise to stretch all the way down to Tierra del Fuego in the cruelest example of Manifest Destiny imaginable.

And that's why evil has always been baked into our country. Sadism and inhumanity have always been lurking under our polite veneer of freedom. Freedom for me, not for thee.

Hell, if they'd taught us about Kansas in school, we might not even be in this fucking situation right now.

I beseech you to click that link. Read the whole thing. It's enlightening. But at the very least read about Kansas.

If this entices you, they write about how Lincoln, when he was a young man, despised people who spoke crudely in front of women. In one instance, he beat the daylights out of one such guy . . . and then rubbed dogshit in his eyes. They never told us about that on Presidents Day.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #304: WE LOST A WORLD

 So last time I talked about Gore Vidal's historical novel, Empire. I went in search to  many used bookstores looking for his earlier works in the series, in particular Burr because I wanted to read them in order. While I found many treasures along the way, the only other one of Vidal's I could find was Lincoln. In all honesty, that was the one I was most interested in. I knew that the older John Hay was portrayed as a misanthrope, but one who very much still had his finger on the pulse of society. I knew in Lincoln he would be portrayed as a young man, someone who was an adult but still couldn't grow a beard, so he took to gluing fake beards on his face so that people would take him seriously.

I bought the book, and I went to one of my favorite places in the world: the Graue Mill.

I don't remember the first time my mom took me there, but it was so long ago that they didn't have signs that said not to feed the ducks. She would give me a half-loaf of bread so I could break them up and toss them to ducks and geese. I couldn't have been older than four. That place is very dear to me. The Fuller house still stands to this day. The woods are named after that family, Fullersburg. But the Graue Mill is not just any old place. It is one of the very last working mills in Illinois. Most importantly it was a stop on the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape to Canada. And at one point in time, Abraham Lincoln stayed at the house here. I'm fairly certain that it's not the same house, that it was razed years ago and now a new structure stands there. Regardless, Lincoln walked on this land.

I have been a regular visitor all of my life. It is the place I feel the safest. It is the place where my best thinking happens. I try to go there when most people are at work or in school so I more or less have it to myself. And the ducks. The geese. The chipmunks. The deer. The occasional fox and coyote. No bears. They have not been seen in this area for decades.

Sometimes I read there. Sometimes I write there. Back when I had the full use of my legs I hiked everywhere. There are even a few paths that lead to dead ends, and you either have to walk back or climb a minor cliff face. I usually chose to climb the cliff face. There is even a very, very secret place there. I only go there in the most intimate of moments because there is evidence there that no one has been at that place since the 'Eighties. I know that because I recognize the litter. For example, I saw a Pepsi can from the 'Eighties there, and you'd think that would have been cleaned up by now.

In case you're interested, there is a nearly complete wooly mammoth skeleton on the far side of Fullersburg Woods. Touching it is like touching something from a far distant past.

And so I found myself reading Vidal's Lincoln on the very ground that Lincoln once walked. It probably shouldn't have mattered so much, but I could still feel the power of his presence in the novel. It made it feel so much more real, and history should always feel real. That's the only way you can connect with it. And once that connection is gone, it's gone. There is no retrieving it.

History is never too far behind us. And while Hay might have been right in Empire, about us having lost a world, there is still a world to be remembered. And, having that knowledge, maybe moving into a new world. One that is different, but one that has learned from the mistakes of the past. I forgot who said it, but someone once pointed out that it's only a mistake if you don't learn from it.

And now there is some talk that the Graue Mill will be destroyed due to a reorganization of Salt Creek's flow. No historical consideration is being given to it. If you drive by today, you can already see how different Salt Creek looks as opposed to the way it looked only ten years ago.

If this happens, we will lose another world. An important world to history.

An important world to me. I can't imagine living in a world without this place. The only place that can bring me peace or even a calm state of mind. We can't let this happen. We can't let this piece of living history die.

Or it will be another thing that we lost for the sake of ignoring all that came before us.