Is this not the most inviting scene? This is the creation of my cousin Cindi's two boys, Tim & Logan. The foot of snow that landed in Lowgap, North Carolina, was obviously enjoyed. I'm including some of her other photos, showing their home in the mountains. She commented that in weather like this, a husband with a backhoe is a handy thing. (Eat your heart out, Red Green!)
The view of the mountains (below) from Cindi & Victor's deck is the Blue Ridge in North Carolina and Virginia. Isn't it beautiful? And you can see the pines around their home. . . Lowgap is famous for Christmas greenery.
The young men responsible for the "cool" living room decor lounge to the left. Creativity really does run in my family!
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*Abraham Lincoln: A Life by Michael Burlingame (left). While you're sitting there in the lamplight, you might as well be reading the ultimate biography of a very interesting and inspiring man, written by a very interesting and inspiring man. Okay, I'll level with you: This is a two-volume, two-thousand page tome and the cost is equivalent to our wine budget for the month (okay, the week), but not since William Herndon has there been such a significant work on the 16th president.
Sue Ann Seel and I again visited the Little Grill near Manhattan where Chris Biggs and Steve Hinrichs were playing. Folks, they are so good and that little Jamaican grill has just about the most interesting eclectic decor I've ever seen(outside my own house, of course). From bait bucket light fixtures to grass-skirted overhangs, it screams "good time" when you walk in the door. They also have absolutely the best waitstaff in the world. Try it sometime, but especially on Wednesday evenings when Chris & Steve are playing.
Robert E. Lee's surrender to U. S. Grant marked the end of the war in the minds of many, but not in reality. There were still armies in the field, prisoners of war in far flung prisons, hundreds of thousands of refugees some of whom might, or might not, see home. With the assassination of Lincoln, the fear that swept the country was palpable: Would the war start again? Would slavery be reinstated? Would the reunited country indeed split in two? Would four years of bloodshed be for nothing for either side?
Last night, my friend Janet and I were invited to attend the annual awards ceremony for the Kansas Association for Conservation and Environmental Education (KACEE). While several educators were honored, the big award went to Rex Buchanan of the Kansas Geological Survey. In every Kansan's library is a book called Roadside Kansas written by Rex and my friend, Jim McCauley, with PHENOMENAL photos by John Charlton. For all you folks who think Kansas is flat and boring, get this book!!!! Both Jim and John were guests on my radio show and their knowledge and experience is endless. ( I nearly fell off my chair laughing when Jim got a question and pulled out his pocket guide to "Geological Eras" or whatever it's called.) 
You can see more at http://www.kgs.ku.edu/. Visit this site. And again, I say, visit this site! The information and the photographs are priceless. What an incredible world we live in if we just take the time to explore and understand it.
Speaking of Western characters, how about that Abe Lincoln? Sure enough, he graces the cover of this month's edition of Wild West magazine, with the title, "Boss of the Plains." He's wearing a cowboy hat. It's a priceless image! We tend to forget that the 16th president was a "western man," as Jefferson Davis said (in explaining why it would not do to kidnap him; he was a "Western man" and would thus fight to the death something Davis would not risk).
The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. (All Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. There he learned to read and first heard the words abolition and abolitionists. "Going to live at Baltimore," Douglass would later say, "laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity."
From Antiques and the Arts Online:
Keeping it in the family, a pair of 1869 letters (one incomplete) from Lincoln's widow, in which she refers to him as having been "from my eighteenth year — Always — lover — husband — father and all, all to me — truly my all," brought $14,950. 
The perfect centerpiece for the Lincoln Society Christmas party- - the Lincoln Home in gingerbread. Johanna Rosson created this spicy spectacle for competition with Iron Chef Bobby Flay. Flay, a New Yorker, apparently did a spectacular interpretation of the Empire State Building, and worked from architectural drawings.
Custer!! We can't get enough of the man or the myth! See Tom's beautiful blog today for confirmation and read Louis Kraft's excellently crafted article in the newest issue of American History. Louis discusses the making of our favorite flick, They Died With Their Boots On, and parallels the personalities of George Custer and Errol Flynn.
. . . is phenomenal. As Noel and I walked through this week, I kept asking myself what would I have done differently, and I just can't think of anything. As you step through the stages of the Lincolns' lives, you come to understand how ordinary the family was and what an extraordinary place in history they now occupy. One of my favorite exhibits was "The Permissive Parent" (left). At the far left, stretched out on the sofa, his nose in the paper, is Lincoln the Lawyer. Meanwhile, Tad and Willie busy themselves destroying the office--splattering ink, scattering papers. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, was known to drink and who could blame him? He describes Lincoln as oblivious to the boys' behavior.
It seems that Abraham Lincoln has been again voted the most revered president in history. Up until John Wilkes Booth shot him, he was likely the most hated president. His death catapulted him to martyrdom. So I have come to believe.
That didn't fit with what we had learned in school. Hadn't the grief for Father Abraham been deep, universal, and flooding forth like the streams from the mountains? This woman's story said, no, there is more, and we set off to find it.
In the South, some felt they had been delivered from their greatest enemy and that God had finally heard their prayers. Others, though, realized that this was the greatest blow yet to the fallen country. Whatever their personal feelings for Lincoln, there were thousands, North and South, who never in their wildest dreams could imagine "The Baboon" would one day be named our greatest president.
Scott Porter, from the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is speaking to the Topeka Civil War Roundtable Thursday night. His research on the battle of Camden Point, Missouri, is intriguing and Scott has found the Missouri/Kansas border war chillingly relevant to the topics he is teaching his students. Next Tuesday, February 27, our friend Rob Hodge (left, center, and right--that's right...it's modern techno hocus-pocus) speaks to the Kansas City CWRT on preservation, history, and moviemaking. He and his partners just won an emmy for their documentary The Battle of Franklin. Good work, guys!
There is a documentary in the works on screen legend, Dub Taylor. Called, That Guy: The Legacy of Dub Taylor, the film is so named because people remembered Dub's face and not his name. Well, they've been talking to the wrong crowd, because I'll guarantee that everybody in our house knows his name. One of Tom's favorite movies, other than Tombstone, of course, is Bonnie and Clyde, and who can forget Dub as "Melvin," the father of C. W. Moss? But I'll always remember the Dub who was hiding under a table during a fracas in the movie The Undefeated. Trying to avoid the fight, he decided to reach up and grab vittles instead. What he came back with was a handful of "Grits!" Dub's first name was Walter, and as Southerners are wont to do, friends called him "Dubya." Now you know. Another reason for me to love Dub is the fact that he was born in Virginia (add another lustrous name to my list!) Visit the filmakers website at http://thatdub.com/
