Aardvark Art Glass

Has this come to your town? It’s the Abe Lincoln traveling museum aka The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Tour. Basically, it’s a semi full of fairly high tech Abe related exhibits including a hologram of Abe giving a speech off the back of a train. It’s here in Madison (nearby, anyway, in Verona) today and tomorrow. Check the website to see if it’s coming to your town. This thing has got the most chaotic and inefficient tour schedule I’ve ever seen. It could show up anywhere at anytime.

Here’s a picture of Don and a replica of Abe Lincoln’s famous stove pipe hat:

Don appears to be scoffing at the hat which is not an unsurprising reaction as the hat was kind of disappointing. I thought it would be bigger. The plaque behind it claims that it is an exact replica complete with wear marks on the brim where Lincoln would have grasped the hat to tip it to the ladies. Also, the plaque claims that he used the hat as a vessel to stow papers. If any of this is untrue I expect someone whose initials are Jean Yates to clue us in. She is a Lincoln maven.

Also in the trailer was a plasma screen with a movie interpreting the entire Civil War in four minutes. On the screen was a map of the US with a line representing the northern and southern fronts. It moved south and north and south as the years sped by while a counter in the corner kept track of the number of dead on both sides. That was neat. Not that 1.3 million people died but that you got a lot of information in four minutes. The whole exhibit was pretty neat–for being free and inside a truck and everything. If Abe’s truck comes to your town you should go inside and check it out.

So speaking of Presidents, did you know that, in an attempt to create another icon like the teddy bear, William Howard Taft was once tied to the character Billy Possum? I read that on Wikipedia (Virginia Opossum entry) so you can take it to the bank (or revise it until it makes sense to you). For some reason, opossums weren’t as endearing to the public as little stuffed bears so the whole thing never really took off. Evidence of the once tangy idea exists today on the Possum Politics website. That is a stitch.