(no subject)

[msmemory_archive]

One of my favorite thought experiments is imagining being able to bring someone forward from history, and see his reaction to modern times. Showing Ben Franklin a modern home, or showing Gutenberg a library.

Wouldn't it be lovely to see Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and his reaction to Obama's election?

Comments

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Even better: W.E.B Dubois, and Sojourner Truth. :)

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

The next best thing would be for President Obama¹ to deliver a major speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. (As best I can tell from Googling, he has not so far given a speech from that venu. Given the obvious comparison to Martin Luther King, I expect that if he had, it would be easily Googleable. But I can't claim to be sure.)

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¹ President Obama. Damn I like that phrase. The Presidents in my adult life have been a senile fool, a time-serving party apparatchik, a man of immense talent who squandered his opportunity for greatness, and a juvenile delinquent megalomaniac; I generally called them Reagan, Bush, Bill, and Shrub. But now, finally, I will have a President it feels natural to call by his title.

[laurion]

As a republican, you don't think he might inadvertently have been a McCain supporter? Of course, the definitions and values of parties shift over time as they attempt to track the center of public opinions, so republican now doesn't mean what it meant then...

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I think he was a thoughtful man, and I like to think he would have found Obama's candidacy the superior one, but I don't think it would have mattered to his reaction. How could he not see that this man is emancipated?

(On a side note, didn't they have libraries in Gutenberg's day? Not modern lending libraries, but large collections of books that scholars might go and study, surely.)

[metageek.livejournal.com]

On a side note, didn't they have libraries in Gutenberg's day?

There were, but the scale of a modern library would have been mind-boggling. Even a small town library, with, say, 100,000 books, would rank among (above?) the largest collections of 15th-century Europe. Plus, of course, everybody is allowed to read them.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Well, Alexandria had probably 100,000s of scrolls in its day... I don't know about the state of libraries in the 15th century. Seeing the amount of traffic in a major modern library might be a wondrous sight for him, though.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Yes, supposedly, Alexandria had something like 750,000 scrolls. I would expect, though, that scrolls tended to be shorter than bound books, since they weren't random-access.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think the idea is something like a 10:1 ratio of scrolls to Works, where the multi-scroll work might still be undersized by our standards.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

OK. And my local library says it has 140,000 works, so nearly twice Alexandria's collection. Of course, that count includes things like "Goodnight Moon".

At the college where my dad used to teach, they were proud that they had over a million volumes...but, to reach that million, they had to buy a lot of crap. I worked there one summer, and they actually had Cliff's Notes.

Maybe, maybe not

[metageek.livejournal.com]

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." -- Lincoln, in a debate with Douglas

I'd like to think that he'd be happy to learn he was wrong, though.

John Quincy Adams

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

http://www.historycentral.com/amistad/amistad.html

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

from boston.com:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/cartoons/11_03_08_inktank?pg=6

If you have a moment, look through all the editorial cartoons. The cartoonists, not normally a swoony bunch, have put together some of the most uplifting cartoons I have ever seen. I choked up over a couple of them.

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

As long as you're picking up Lincoln, pick up Douglass, too. No, not Stephen, Frederick. He deserves to see this coming Inauguration Day, too.