Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL

Adi and Dhruv visit Lincoln's town! Springfield is like that: the minute you get off the interstate, all you see are signs pointing to Lincoln this and Lincoln that...and why not! It is impressive how Springfield has maintained such an incredible tribute to America's tallest President (6f 4"). We (the two of us and Pune buddy Nagraj, who is working on his PhD at UIUC) drove from Urbana and entered Springfield, parked and got into the Abraham Lincoln Predidential Library and Museum around 2pm. In the next 3 hours or so, we took in two gripping documentaries (Lincoln's Eyes and Ghosts in the Library) that had the best special effects we had ever seen. Holographic 3D tricks-of-light, smoke, fake fire, shaking chairs, screens of varying depths...wow! Imagine all this for a President's museum. And as we walked through the chronlogical recreation of Abe's life from his time as a kid in Pigeon Creek, IN to his assasination at the Ford Theater on Good Friday, 1865 while watching "Our American Cousin" and a recreation of a tomb...fantastic portrayal of an embattled personality.

Two days later, the History Channel premiered it's 3 hour Lincoln documentary focusing on the mental battle he fought at almost every stage of his life. What was remarkable to me was the fact that he did so much at such a late age and was quite a late bloomer in many ways. Granted, it was the 19th century, but I think there's a moral for all of us who think that our directions in life are set and all we have to do is walk down them...Lincoln was almost 40 when he had given up on his political ambitions. But in the next 5 years he would resolve to take it up: slavery gave him an agenda, he did the rest. Inspiring stuff. And oh yes, that's the two of us in front of Abe's Springfield home.