It takes all my words just to sell them the truth

[sovay]

Bertie Owen the indefatigable, fisher king of Turing's apple, survived his third keyboard transplant tonight. My father built most of the computers I learned to type on as a child; I appreciate profoundly that he retains his ability to take them apart and put them together again in ways not necessarily designed or approved by Steve Jobs. I have returned my mother's twenty-year-old tangerine-colored external keyboard to her with thanks. I am looking forward to writing while curled up on the couch again.

Most of my day actually went toward helping a_reasonable_man with his office, which he will be moving; we packed thirty boxes of books, in the course of which I nicely did not steal Jonathan D. Sarna and Ellen Smith's The Jews of Boston (1995), the AEC's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1954), or Philip B. Kunhardt Jr.'s Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography (1992), although I did argue with the last. I think it's fair of the book to point out that Lincoln did not like most images of himself—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, photographs—and was not alone in feeling that he looked most attractive and most like himself in motion; photography froze him at odd, awkward angles that emphasized his gritty complexion, his heavy bones, and his general air of having been dropped off a planet where everyone was a lot lankier. Nonetheless, I hit this photo:



It was captioned: "Taken in Springfield on May 20, 1860, this picture shows how ugly Lincoln could look on occasion."

Excuse me? That is a man with fantastic cheekbones who looks like he has a sense of humor and looks better with his hair mussed up than most of his century looked with it neatly oiled and combed. Nice eyebrows, too. Has he got terrible skin and bags under his eyes that could swap self-deprecating jokes with Fred Allen's? Yeah; so? Seriously, where did this "If I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one" nonsense have to come from? Had America in the nineteenth century just not caught up to the concept of joli-laid? What was the book's excuse?

Afterward I was so tired that I almost fell asleep on the bus from Harvard Square to Arlington Heights. I'd gotten maybe two hours of sleep last night. There was a small child with her adult—I assumed mother, but I know that all sorts of people appear in public with small children without being parents, including sometimes me—in the seat in front of me; she had a small, self-titled book made of construction paper and she was scribbling busily in it, but she kept twisting around to observe me and the other passengers and occasionally comment at the boundary-disregarding volume of an interested two- or three-year-old. When we passed a gas station and the man across the aisle from me read out one of the prices to himself, she instantly called out, "Who's talking? Who said 3-2-9? Who said it?" I don't know for sure that she was talking about me as the bus passed through Arlington Center, but I was definitely half-dozing by then, my head propped on my hand and my eyes closed. For context, I was wearing jeans, a blue T-shirt, my corduroy coat; my hair was down the back of my jacket because it was windy. The small clear voice said, "Is that man sick?" and the voice of the woman who may or may not have been her mother said carefully and not too loudly, "I think that man's a lady and I think she's just tired."

I had an enormous amount of tom yum kung for dinner and that was great.

Then I got Bertie Owen up and running and checked the internet for the first time all day and saw the school shooting news and I haven't even bothered to look for the official response; I know it will be terrible. I would rather read about the volcano in Hawaii. That may be destructive, but it's not malevolent. No one has ever been killed by a volcano out of entitlement.

Comments

[lemon_badgeress]

Hurray for Bertie Owen

This one is my state. I can only approach the fractured edges of it cautiously.

[gwynnega]

Hooray for Bertie Owen!

As a stamp-collecting child, I was fascinated by pictures of Lincoln. I thought (and still think) that he had an amazing face.

[rachelmanija]

Sexiest US Presidents:

1. Obama.
2. Lincoln.
3. JFK

There are others I would certainly consider hot allowing for changing tastes in facial hair but those are the three whose pics are legit hot.

[thisbluespirit]

"Taken in Springfield on May 20, 1860, this picture shows how ugly Lincoln could look on occasion."

There's no accounting for the strangeness of people. I agree with your assessment of the photo entirely!

I'm glad Bertie Owen survived the transplant & very much hope you got some more sleep last night.

[cmcmck]

Ugly? No!

Just a man with a very powerful facial bone structure.

A lot of Midlanders and Welsh borderers here have such powerful bones.

It's intriguing to see an image of a younger Abe.

[cyphomandra]

Yay for Bertie! May he live long and prosper.

When we went to see The Reduced Shakespeare company perform they were pulling audience members up based on physical resemblance to famous people, and my father got called up as Abraham Lincoln. He does not have the cheekbones but does have the forehead and unruly hair.

[moon_custafer]

Some years back there was a book that was touted in the press was raising the question “Was Lincoln gay?” I suspect the book’s thesis was more complex than that. Anyway, the excerpts I read didn’t say one thing or another about Lincoln’s feelings on the matter, but did convince me that several men (apart from Whitman, who I’d already noticed swooning) thought Lincoln was pretty hot stuff. Which is nice to know.

[rydra_wong]

I am especially fond of the one from 1857 where the photographer smoothed his hair and Lincoln pointedly re-tousled it

I admire his ability to achieve that kind of artful tousle without access to modern styling products!

And yes, killer cheekbones.

Abe

[a_reasonable_man]

Some people refer to the slicked-hair Lincoln picture. It's this one, which is also the earliest image of him historians have found:

http://rogerjnorton.com/al9.jpg

Thank you so much for helping pack my office!

[kore]

YAY BERTIE

I remember being startled as a kid by how hot I found beardless Lincoln. I didn't tell anyone about it for fear they'd think I was weird!