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How happy is the little Stone
by Emily Dickinson
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears --
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity --
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HISTORICAL CLIP
On this day, February 12, in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Lincoln, one of America's most admired presidents, grew up a member of a poor family in Kentucky and Indiana. He attended school for only one year, but thereafter read on his own in a continual effort to improve his mind. As an adult, he lived in Illinois and performed a variety of jobs including stints as a postmaster, surveyor and shopkeeper, before entering politics. He served in the Illinois legislature from 1834 to 1836, and then became an attorney. In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd; together, the pair raised four sons.
When he won the presidency in 1860 by approximately 400,000 popular votes and carried the Electoral College, he was in effect handed a ticking time bomb. South Carolina led other states in an exodus from the Union that began shortly after his election. By February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had also seceded. Soon after, the Civil War began. As the war progressed, Lincoln moved closer to committing himself and the nation to the abolitionist movement and, in 1863, finally signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The document freed slaves in the Confederate states.
Lincoln was the tallest president at 6' 4. As a young man, he impressed others with his sheer physical strength--he was a legendary wrestler in Illinois--and entertained friends and strangers alike with his dry, folksy wit, which was still in evidence years later.
Exasperated by one Civil War military defeat after another, Lincoln wrote to a lethargic general if you are not using the army I should like to borrow it for awhile. An animal lover, Lincoln once declared, "I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." Fittingly, a variety of pets took up residence at the Lincoln White House, including a pet turkey named Jack and a goat called Nanko. Lincoln's son Tad frequently hitched Nanko to a small wagon and drove around the White House grounds.
Lincoln's sense of humor may have helped him to hide recurring bouts of depression. He admitted to friends and colleagues that he suffered from intense melancholia and hypochondria most of his adult life. Perhaps in order to cope with it, Lincoln engaged in self-effacing humor, even chiding himself about his famously homely looks. When an opponent in an 1858 Senate race debate called him two-faced, he replied, If I had another face do you think I would wear this one?
Lincoln is remembered as The Great Emancipator. To Confederate sympathizers, however, Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation reinforced his image as a hated despot and ultimately led John Wilkes Booth to assassinate him on April 14, 1865. His favorite horse, Old Bob, pulled his funeral hearse.
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WORD FOR TODAY
emancipation
noun
- the act of freeing or state of being freed; liberation
- informal freedom from inhibition and convention
Emancipation is any of various efforts to procuring political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group, or more generally in discussion of such matters. Emancipation stems from ex manus capere ('take out the hand').
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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Born Feb. 12, 1809
Died April 14, 1865
Died April 14, 1865
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic and financial modernization.
Born Feb 12, 1915
Died: Sep 11, 1987
Died: Sep 11, 1987
Lyon Himan Green, better known by the stage name Lorne Greene, was a Canadian actor and musician.
His television roles include Ben Cartwright on the western Bonanza, and Commander Adama in the science fiction movie and subsequent TV Series Battlestar Galactica. He also worked on the Canadian television nature documentary series Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, and in television commercials as a dog food spokesman.
Born Feb 12, 1980
Age: 32 years old
Age: 32 years old
Christina Ricci is an American actress. Ricci received initial recognition and praise as a child star for her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), and her role as Kat Harvey in Casper (1995). Ricci made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with The Ice Storm (1997), followed by an acclaimed performance in Buffalo '66 (1998) and then The Opposite of Sex (1998), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
She continued her success with well-received performances in Sleepy Hollow (1999), Monster (2003), Penelope (2006) and Black Snake Moan (2007). In 2006 Ricci was nominated for an Emmy award for her role as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy. In 2011–12 she played Maggie Ryan in the television show Pan Am.
Born Feb. 12, 1809
Died April 19, 1882
Died April 19, 1882
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.
Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact.
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If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
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