So, okay, well, if nothing else, it's a far out way of putting off getting down to work, checking out who was born [future 10th President John Tyler, 1790] and who croaked [King Gustav III of Sweden, at what must have been a thrilling masked ball, all smelling of perfume, powders, pomade, and candle wax, on a spring night in 1792.... man oh man, picture those fleeting glances and embroidered party clothes..], on this day in history. Better to revisit Luciano Pavarotti's glorious death scene than think about my tax appointment an hour from now. And here in the next little while I've got to get serious about doing a painting of what Hiram Young's yoke and wagon 'manufactory' might have looked like in the 1840s, here in Independence, the Queen City of the Trails. Do you know about him? Oh baby - look him up! A great and resourceful overcomer he was.

and then again...

A somber sort of thrill it was, driving 'cross the Missouri, the Mississippi and the Wabash and the Kaskaskia Rivers. And the Ohio, stealing glimpses of that wide expanse of pale pewter while maintaining my lane, thinking of all of those long-gone river travelers. Dan'l Boone. Lewis & Clark. I remember painting a picture of the Lincolns crossing over to Indiana in 1816. Can't help thinking of a flotilla of dugouts, canoes, flatboats, rafts, keelboats, and steamboats. Oars and paddle wheels, cutting, rippling, churning. All those trapped in bondage, busting to cross the Ohio to get to the free land on the other side.

1st I will & then I won't/I'll do & then I don't

So. Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro have passed through the veil between us and the violet Blue Beyond. And total trembling nervous wreck I was, driving home from away off yonder, after a few days of talking to young Kentuckians. Or specifically the part where the snow thickened round about the wide Mississippi, where I was doing my best to thread my way from I-64 to westbound I-70, along with many a vehicle piloted by drivers as dim as their cars. You'd think that their headlights were coin-operated! Sheesh! So grateful am I to be home again, home again. We're talking real guardian angle stuff.

Inauguration

So, you precious few who take the time to see what I write here, have probably noticed that I've been writing nothing here whatsoever. Nor will I, not anymore than once a week anyway, unless I forget or change my mind. But this is too big a day, too much has happened here lately to neglect writing today. It's the old Inauguration Day, not to be changed to our customary I. Day until 1933, so it was that FDR was sworn in for his 2nd term on 20 Jan 1937. So. A fine day for inaugurating, beginning a new deal. A huge day it was, March 4, 1797, when one leader stepped aside for another - peacefully, by the consent of the people. Remarkable, no foolin'. Afterwards, ex-President George Washington headed home from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon by way of the half-built President's House. He gazed upon those stone walls on March 14, to see how the work was progressing. It'd be almost about three & a half years before John & Abigail Adams, President No. 2 & his Lady, could move into the place and even then, it wasn't entirely finished. Now the mansion is pretty much completed and decorated and wired to a fare-thee-well. The republic, now, it still needs lots of work. Probably will never made right, especially as 'We, the people' are unable to consent on anything other than the fact that things aren't going so very goddam well, not at all. Fourteen Presidents later, 136 years after Adams of Massachusetts took his Oath of Office, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois took his, 150 years ago this very day. And here's how he ended his first Inaugural Address: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

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"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Wanna read the whole thing? Do! You won't be sorry. Would that those better angels would illuminate the minds & hearts of our current crop of well-tailored windbags, ever-media=&-moolah-conscious BSificators. "And," as President Adams said on his Inauguration Day, "may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence." And, as I say now, by the way, Rest in Peace Corporal Frank Buckles, gone well & truly Over There.

"All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much."

George Harrison, b. 25 Feb 1943 on Enrico Caruso's birthday

So, it's a Beatle birthday, therefore lucky so I made it home today from over in north central Missouri, in Moberly, where I presented six assemblies yesterday to 3rd, 4th, & 5th graders. I passed at least a dozen cars and two overturned semis that had gone off the road into the white. What fun those presentations were. The kids were great and here I am home again, home again, safe & sound... as sound as I've ever been anyway. Years & years ago - 2014 will make fifty years since the night in February when the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I lived with my poor sad mom & furious dad, my three little brothers & baby sister just a block away from where I'm sitting here typing about how much, how deeply I loved the Beatles from the very first moment. They were THE joyful part of my dorky, doofy, abysmal 13-year-old life. Oh George Harrison. Oh John, Paul, & Ringo. Bless 'em forever & I thank 'em forever.

So. A mere 201 years it has been since Frédéric Chopin came into the world on George Washington's birthday, back in Emperor Napoleon's heyday, when Abraham Lincoln was a baby and Simon Bolivar was on the rise down in South America. P.T. Barnum was born that year, too. Just for you to know. As to Mr. Chopin, do, if you haven't, see him portrayed by Hugh Grant in the splendid 1991 film, Impromptu.... Meanwhile, pooped am I, having been called up by a radio producer on the stroke of midnight last night in order to be interviewed live, sort of, on a show called Coast to Coast AM. And why? Because of yesterday being Presidents Day and my having written Ghosts of the White House. Not, decidedly not, a spooky book, but is the White House haunted? I wouldn't be surprised, given the intensity of the lives lived there.

I was told that the host would be talking briefly w/ 3 'news' guests [one of 'em was Whitley Streiber, the paranormal expert] and was asked if I'd taken time to listen to the show. I lied. Anyway it was 12:23 before the guy got around to me and it went real well, very conversational. As I had NEVER listened to the guy's show before, I was a bit taken aback when I heard listeners invited to call in. One told about the spirits of her dead pets. There was a brief discussion of Geo. Washington's vision of the end of the nation. news to me, I'm ashamed to say. I'd gathered up the references I'd found about Lincoln's ghost and discovered that the spirit of a torch-bearing British soldier c. 1814 has been seen more than once and more than a few cold
spots have been experienced. And that there haven't been as many sightings since the old joint was gutted in '48. If anything would jangle the psychic space, that'd be it, I figure. Then George [Noory, the host] said he'd heard [from me] that I could rattle off all of the presidents in under a minute. He clocked me @ 40 seconds & asked me if I'd read 'em. 'No! I swear!' He asked me about the book & if it was available, thanked me & I got hung up on. I staggered out into the dark w/ Mimi for her walk & got to bed at 1:30 this morning. The burden of fame, I guess.

So, away I have been, school visiting in North Carolina so nothing here from me about Susan B. Anthony's birthday on the 15th or whatever other commemorations have taken place, such as the 150th anniversary of the day when poor old Jefferson Davis became the Confederacy's one and only President. Seeing as the next few years will be loaded with legions of Civil War sesquicentennials, I made myself a new costume. A helluva lot cuter it would have been had I been thinner, but whatcha gonna do?