Commemorating the Gettysburg Address

Today is the 146th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and in this, his bicentennial year, I gave myself a little assignment that I would encourage anyone else to take up, as well. In fact, I’d be happy to share them on here. The assignment? In 272 words*, the same economical number that Lincoln used in his address, try to encapsulate what it means to you, or what you think it means to the country. If I kept working till I got it just right, the anniversary would come and go. So here’s my stab at it . . .

One hundred forty-six years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln stood up at Gettysburg and forever recalibrated our national compass. He rode a chestnut horse to the new national cemetery. One witness remarked that his pants, hitched up, revealed “homemade gray socks” that hardly fit the occasion.

But the words he spoke were not homespun. They embraced echoes of Pericles and Psalms, drew from Daniel Webster and Lincoln’s own trembling experience.

When he walked across the platform that day, his footsteps audible to a silent crowd that had just heard a two-hour oration, he spoke so briefly that no camera caught the moment. But in it, he swung the lens of this country’s conscience back toward liberty and equality, toward the spirit that formed our Constitution, and away from its cold letter, which can divide us.

He did it in 272 words. Yet today, entire books struggle to explain the significance of what he said. The French constitution borrowed from it. Schoolchildren still memorize it.

The night before the address, a crowd gathered outside Lincoln’s window. He knew a word was expected of him, but said, “I have no speech to make. In my position it is somewhat important that I should not say any foolish things.”

For Lincoln, who was poet and politician, words were precious and powerful.

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln not only gave voice to the force of our founding Ideas, but endowed their expression with a new energy. He not only spoke of “a new birth of freedom,” but incarnated one through the power of his words.

May that power, like these words, not perish from the earth.

For further reading, a couple of recommendations.

The best short look at the day at Gettysburg I’ve read is from Doris Kears Goodwin’s well-known “Team of Rivals,” pages 583 to 587. From it came the details in my short piece about Lincolns spectacles, his socks and his footsteps on the platform.

The best longer treatment is, undoubtedly, Garry Wills’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America.”

To read the address itself, click here.

*While there are 272 words in the most-cited version of the Gettysburg Address, we cannot be sure exactly how many words he uttered from the platform that day. The five copies we have of the address differ slightly from each other.

Respecting the U.S. Flag

The flap over Sarah Palin’s picture on the cover of Newsweek brought up an issue that has long been a sticking point for me — but it has nothing to do with running shorts or the tone of the picture. It has to do with the American Flag.

I don’t know how they picked Todd Puckett and me out of a crowd of junior high students way back when, but they did. We were sixth graders at Shelby County East Middle school when we were selected to put up the flag every morning. Maybe somebody told them we were dependable. Maybe it was that we didn’t miss much school.

Regardless, Todd and I would retrieve the flag from its place in the school office every morning, and run it up the flag pole. We were, almost instinctively, I think, very conscientious about this task. I can remember dashing out of class if I saw it start raining, so that the flag would not be displayed in the rain.

At the end of the day, we took down the flag, folded it properly, tucked in the last flap of fabric and returned it to the office.

Maybe all that flag-raising drilled something into me. I remember reading the U.S. Code Title 36 Chapter 10 for proper care and usage of the flag.

I suppose that’s why, over the years, I have had a few problems with the way the flag is treated. For years, U of L fans railed — and wrote to me — angry that the team did not display the American flag on their uniforms. I always wrote back the same thing.

The U.S. Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Paragraph J, says, No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.

The Code is silent on whether a pin should be worn, therefore would have had nothing to say about whether Barack Obama wore or did not wear one during his run for President.

The Code is clear, however, on another practice, one that I have opposed at two newspapers I have worked for. At least twice in my career, newspapers for which I have been employed have used full pages to print a replica of the flag to be displayed in widows or other places. (The display has usually been sponsored by an advertiser.) Again to the Flag Code, same chapter, Paragraph I:

The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

Furthermore, the flag should not be used as a clothing design, or, as the code says, “should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.” Moreover, from the U.S. Code:

The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.

Which brings us to Palin. This isn’t a political discussion, but I’m surprised her handlers would allow her to be photographed with the flag in such a position. (I also was surprised when they allowed her to wrap herself in a flag for a photo last year). Note: I’m assuming this Newsweek photo is an accurate representation and that the flag wasn’t Photoshopped in. I have seen no allegations that it was.

I was always impressed, in covering high school sports in Indiana, that if the colors were presented by a color guard before the game, crowds invariably (and properly) did not sit down until the colors had left the field of play, well after the National Anthem had ended.

At a recent University of Kentucky basketball game, an older man upbraided a college student for standing with his hands behind his back during the playing of the National Anthem. During the presidential campaign, Obama got caught on this one, standing for the anthem with his hands together in front of him. Many people do this, and I’ve never thought it disrespectful. But, to be accurate, the U.S. Code says:

During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should render the military salute at the first note of the anthem and retain this position until the last note. When the flag is not displayed, those present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed there.

So that’s the nit-picking rules lecture for today. It should be noted that the President may modify portions of the flag code at any time. (I’m assuming Bush did for athletic uniforms after Sept. 11). Carry on.

Life in Possibility City

I live in a place called Possibility City. I don’t expect you out-of-towners to have heard of it, despite our cutting-edge ad campaigns which you might have seen on late-night cable between singles-line commercials.

I can vouch for the suitability of the name Possibility City, because of the chatter I hear on the streets and along the bike paths.

Can we get a new bridge? It is possible. No city in America has spent more time talking about new bridges than Possibility City.

Can we get light rail, or better public transit? Absolutely possible. Our school superintendent takes job candidates out for $300 dinners. Do you think we are not high rollers?

We might possibly have a National Basketball Association team here one day. I hope they are named the Possibility City Possums.

Sure, we have our problems. Who doesn’t? Mistakes have been made. Yes, we throw our animal carcasses from Possibility City Animal Services into the city dump, but name me one major metro area that doesn’t struggle with that.

(We are moving forward on a kick-ass polar bear exhibit, which should more than make up for it. You can write that down. Possibility Accomplished.)

And, yes, we’ve given a boatload of money for downtown development to some outside outfit that doesn’t exactly like to tell us what they’re doing with all that cash. But what are you going to do? These things sometimes happen between strategic partners. It was either give the money to them or this fancy TV preacher.

I want to talk today, however, not about possibility, but reality.

A lot of cities are spinning their wheels on trendy gimmicks like transit and bridges and job creation; but here in Possibility City we do not get bogged down in such infrastructure mumbo-jumbo and group-think. We are not trying to remake the wheel. We are remaking the paddle-wheel.

That’s right. When we had a situation in which our steamboat, the Belle of Possibility, wrecked in the river, we were not content to tread water, ha ha.

We took it to the garage where they told us that the jockey bar on the paddle wheel was bent and needed replacing, and we did not flinch. We stepped up to the plate. Then they called and told us that the tread on the paddles was worn and we needed new ones. Not unexpected.

And we are adding a $350,000 air conditioning system — because those Possibility River breezes aren’t as soothing as they once were. Name me one other major city that is installing air-conditioning on its paddle-wheeler. Go ahead. Also we have ordered power windows and keyless entry.

But now, we suspect we might have gone to the wrong mechanic. The repairs, originally estimated at $10,000, are going to cost $40,000.

Two days ago, they said they would need to replace the rotors if they could not turn them. And now they say the timing belt looks worn, and that they may need to flush and fill the radiator.

If this boat were not such a necessary part of remaining on the Cutting Edge, you might hear some mumbling around Possibility City. But we must remain proactive. It is the price that must be paid to have a next-generation paddle-wheel steamboat.

Also, we are in the midst of a Major YouTube Grass-Roots Promotion and cannot be sidetracked.

Regardless, at the end of the day, you can be sure that this Possibility City will not be caught up You-Know-What Creek without a paddle-wheel.

A restaurant tale

The boys ordered pancakes and sausage patties for dinner tonight when I took them to a restaurant that I won’t name, except to say that the name of its mascot can be found in the sentence, “Boy, they were really big jerks.”

For 20 minutes we waited, without drinks, without a check-back from the waitress. It was busy. I wondered if they were snubbing us because I’d already gotten into a debate over why I couldn’t get the add-on price for the salad bar instead of the stand-alone price even if I were ordering with a coupon. But I digress.

The point is that the food came with bacon instead of sausage, which was no big deal, even though it came late and cold. I told our server (now a different person) that they’d ordered sausage, and on her way to go get our drinks, she said she’d fix it.

About 10 minutes later, meals eaten, bacon nibbled at, the original server returns and says they want their bacon back!

Katie, age 11, says immediately, “Haven’t they heard of swine flu?”

All the way home the boys sang, “I want my baconback backonback baconback, I want my baconback baconback baconback.”

I know the economy is bad, but has it come to this? Repossessing bacon that people didn’t order in the first place?