Going Political

 On March 17, 2025, Phoebe and I were taking the scenic route to Ohio from her home in Indiana. We wanted the smallest backroads, the nicest little towns, and Wabash, Indiana, was exactly the ticket. I love to look at the original courthouses in small towns, built on such a grand scale and with such lofty intentions.

 Here resides our government. Here, you can come get your marriage license, your dog license; here we store the plat maps for your property, the births and deaths in your family. Here is the judge and the court. It all happens here. Welcome, they seem to say. I was humbled and thrilled to see a beautiful bronze monument to Abraham Lincoln in front of the Wabash courthouse. Phoebe and I parked and jumped out to photograph it.

I first stepped up to the sign and learned that Wabash, Indiana, was the first U.S. city to have electricity! 

Next, I noticed a male American kestrel performing a display flight right over the courthouse, which happens to possess innumerable nooks and crannies where a pair of kestrels could lay eggs and raise little falcons. I was beside myself to be in on this moment of unbidden grace on such a searingly beautiful day, and to be able to share it with Phoebe!

And then I moved over to pay my respects to President Lincoln. He's depicted in contemplation, his angular form a little slumped in repose and apparent deep thought. I was struck by how much better this old bronze is than most newer portraiture one sees. It was created by New York born Charles Keck (1875-1951). It was installed in 1932, and its original all-dark patina has weathered beautifully to copper-red with a few verdigris highlights.  An identical casting of this beautiful sculpture stands in Hingham, Massachusetts. I hope to see it someday.

What does Abraham Lincoln have to do with Indiana? The Indiana Museum explains at this link. The story mentions slavery, unlike government websites which are being wiped "clean" of any mention of this vital part of our history. They've totally rewritten the story of the Underground Railroad on the National Park Service website, taking down a photo of Harriet Tubman, widely acknowledged "Conductor of the Underground Railroad," and replacing the actual history with lines of  AI-generated pap. Here's a 

gift link to a Washington Post article about the stripping of Black history from the National Park Service website, if you're interested in seeing what they've removed and what they replaced it with: meaningless, "authoritative-sounding" AI whitewash. Now that is governmental efficiency. 

Here's part of the Indiana Museum's writeup about the Lincolns in Indiana:

"In 1816, Indiana was a new state, forged out of the Western frontier of the United States. The land, abundant with animal and plant life, attracted men and families daring enough to make the journey and create a home in the dense forests. The Lincoln family of Knob Creek, Kentucky, was one family willing to take that risk. Unable to deal with disputes over land boundaries and disagreeing with Kentucky’s pro-slavery stance, Thomas Lincoln decided to leave in the early fall of 1816 and seek a new home for his family in southern Indiana. Like many new settlers, Thomas faced this challenge by first searching for land he liked, building a temporary home (which gave Thomas first claim to the land), and then returning to prepare his family for the journey. In November 1816, the Lincolns packed their few belongings and traveled north to Indiana. Thomas traveled with his wife, Nancy, their daughter, Sarah (age 9), and son, Abraham (age 7)."

The story goes on to tell how Abe, only 7, and his two siblings helped their dad build a cabin to shelter his family, and how his mother, Nancy Hanks, tragically died from "milk sickness" only two years later, when Abe was only 9 years old. When a milk cow eats white snakeroot, it poisons the cow and her milk, and can kill the cow and anyone who drinks the milk. White snakeroot grows all over my open woods. 

I stood before the monument, my eyes running over the statue, landing on the inscription, reading it over and over. The Zickefoose family has a special connection to Abraham Lincoln. All my life, I've been told he's my eighth cousin. The link seems to come via a relative named Susannah Buzzard, who was one of Nancy Hanks' forebears. After that, it gets hazy, and I know better than to even dip a toe into genealogy. Interestingly, that also means I'm distantly related to Tom Hanks, who is a second cousin five times removed of Nancy Hanks. George Clooney is also related to Nancy Hanks through his mom, Rosemary Clooney's, bloodline. Oddlly enough, neither Tom Hanks nor George Clooney have ever reached out to me, their long-lost cousin, but I'm not mad about that. I've always been proud to have some connection to this learned and deeply humble man.

I read the inscription, and something started rising up in me. It was sorrow. Sorrow at how very, very far America has fallen, how broken it is right now. Lincoln also knew a broken nation. The 1860's weren't the good old days. We were at actual war with ourselves, killing each other by the hundreds of thousands. But we had a wise, kind and strong leader in Lincoln, from 1860 to1865, when he was taken from us by a bullet. He was too good for this world.

My eyes traveled over Lincoln's stately form, and over the monument's inscription, taken from

his Second Inaugural address.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation[']s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations[.]"   

And it hit me hard that everything in this eight-word outtake, and in the extended quote, has been turned inside out, upside down. Bind up the  nation's wounds? No, they're making more wounds, abruptly firing thousands upon thousands of federal workers without cause. Deporting people without one single thought to due process; deporting and holding them in deplorable conditions, and all for show. To get that body count up. Eliminating foreign aid. Even now, people--little children and babies--in Africa are starving to death, waiting for food that will not come, because Trump and Musk have smashed foreign aid to smithereens. Caring for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan? No, they're gutting the Veteran's Administration (no mortgage rescue for veterans any more!), and throwing the Social Security Administration into a death spiral, firing thousands of workers in the name of "efficiency," without the ghost of a concept of a plan for how to run the place without them. The money all of us have set aside through our entire working lives is now in question. People can't get through to the SSA any more. Everything is in uproar and chaos. Who, I ask, thinks that's necessary or beneficial? How does gutting the Federal workforce make things more efficient? How does destroying the government help anyone? Project 2025, in full force. Oh, but Trump doesn't know anything about that. Liars, liars, liars all.

Doing all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations? No, we're actively antagonizing every other country except, possibly, our old enemy, Russia, now our BFF, with tariffs designed to hurt trade, which constitute a new and onerous tax on the consumer. Canada hates us now, with good reason. Mexico, too. They're doing end runs around us to trade with anyone but the U.S. And don't get me started on the president's "review" of university grants and demands that they scrub DEI initiatives, lest they lose them. Or on the mass firings of national park employees, leaving nobody even to clean toilets, and turning national parks over to states for management. Oh, and FEMA. Who could possibly need our government's help when every single week, some massive flood or fire or hurricane or tornado rages through some part of this country, leaving scores of people dead or homeless? No, let's turn disaster relief over to the states. The federal government doesn't need to help. That would be expensive. They're saving money here. They're neglecting, even killing people in the name of efficiency. I refuse to use "we." This is not my government, and I did not vote for this. I'd wager that a number of people who believed Trump's endless spew of lies didn't vote for Project 2025, either, but now, thanks to those voters, we have it, and we are stewing in dystopia the likes of which I've not seen since the Viet Nam war days.

Standing there, with those thoughts and many others banging around in my brain, I teared up with the horror and injustice of it all. I felt ashamed to stand at Lincoln's feet and tell him about the disaster raging in our government--its utter dismantling by cruel and ruthless oligarchs and their fervent youth disciples who know and care nothing about anyone but themselves. Who are erasing anything that doesn't forward the interests of rich white men. Suddenly, diversity and equity are dirty words. And I realized that there was a painting in all this. 

From this:

to this.

  Our hero.