It's the Dress

I've been watching the Inaugural Day festivities every year since Camelot. Sometimes I was rooting for the man of the hour, sometimes just hoping things would go well under him. Reagan seemed so jaunty and familiar; it made me believe all would be well in his term of office. (Pity the air traffic controllers who he soon fired! Pity those early victims of AIDS! Little did they sense what was coming - or in the second case wasn't coming. (Attention. Help. Federal dollars.)I felt the same with George Bush the younger, though I did wonder why Dick Cheney wouldn't sing along to the national anthem. 'What's the deal with this guy?' I remember wondering, long before the man's ways and beliefs became familiar to us all.I do enjoy watching it all. And like millions of us, I just love seeing the gowns.The gown of Barbara Bush's alone, worn by Bush Senior's first lady, a lavish velvet edifice that is so '80s' you expect Molly Ringwald to open a little door  in the skirt area and step out of it!  That's it up top. And how about Mary Todd Lincoln's, immediately below? What I wouldn't give to have that in our attic closet with 30 years of clothing and dress-up accessories!These deep rich blues seem like a popular color for January when the world is gone to shades of white and pigeon-grey. Hillary never looked lovelier in hers, from '93.But how gorgeous are the pales ones too. Like Lady Bird Johnson'sAnd  Rosalynn Carter's, speaking of Camelot. I had a bathrobe in the '70s that looked just like this - or wait, maybe it was my wedding gown - but how cool is it that this was the SECOND time she wore this dress. Those Carters! Way ahead of the rest of us!Of course our current First Lady had one a real stunner four years ago, a dress that only a woman so obviously lean and toned could get away with wearing :I can't wait to see what she has on tonight!And now for some Inauguration Day trivia, who is this First Lady, who wore birthday-cake pink for her gown? Way to go with that hunky date too!

Happy Birthday Mr. President

I missed saying Happy Birthday to Lincoln yesterday so I’ll do it now since he's my favorite president. I like him not for all those myths about reading by firelight but for the things we know are true: The way he remained loyal to his poor crazy wife, difficult as she was, a shopaholic blithely sending the bills for her lavish wardrobe along to the government. The way he comforted her after their boy Will died in the White House even though he himself was devastated by this  loss and even had the child disinterred and his coffin pried open so he could look once more upon his face.

But he was funny too and speaking of funny I guess we might as well get that Geico ad out of the way right now. It’s disrespectful but there’s something so universal about the way his wife fumes and stalks out of the room. Marriage!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdy3orO6tQA]

According to his friend Judge David Davis, Lincoln's rib-tickling tales were really just   “devices to whistle down sadness," a tactic that I for one understand completely.

Finally, I love what he told the crowd in February of 1861 when he left Springfield to take the oath of office. “To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything,” he said that day at the train station.  “Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return…Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

This speech is in my head all the time for some reason, the passing-from-a-young-man-to-an-old-man part especially.Also in my head often is the memory of these chairs set up by his closest associates who stayed with him as he lay dying from that bullet fired into his head at point-blank range.

I took this picture three summers ago.

the same room, filled

reportedly the last photo ever taken of the man