Gettysburg Address Animated

Gettysburg Address from Adam Gault on Vimeo.

“Really haunting, does justice to the speech.” LINK, Via: Vimeo

A new back for the penny

The US Mint has revealed a new design for the 2010 penny. Lincoln in still on the front, but this is the new back. LINK: Boingboing

Crop Art Is For Everyone!

Crop art is exactly what it sounds like: Art made with crops. Generally speaking, that means everything from crop circles to grape-vine wreaths. But we're talking about a very specific kind of crop art. One seldom seen outside the surreal confines of the Minnesota State Fair. This crop art is all about seeds--thousands of them--glued together to form an image. Right now, you're thinking about preschool macaroni pictures, aren't you? Don't. Real crop art is much more challenging.

Lillian Colton deserves the credit for keeping crop art alive in Minnesota. This Abe Lincoln--again, all seeds, including the background--is one of hers. Colton first entered the crop art competition in 1966, the second year of its existence as a special category. Back then, Sheehy says, people were using the seeds like stitches of thread. You'd have a big, blank background with seeds forming some abstract shapes or mimicking old-fashioned embroidery samplers. Colton (truly, a Happy Mutant before her time) went in an entirely different direction. At the 1967 fair, she unveiled her first portrait, using seeds like drops of paint to create texture, depth and shadow.

"She really blew it open by showing you could do any subject matter," Sheehy says. "And the virtuosity she introduced by using the really tiny seeds, it raised the bar with obsessive quality in the art." LINK

Secret message hidden in Lincoln's pocketwatch

Watchismo has the incredible story of an apocryphal anti-slavery message that a watchmaker hid inside Abraham Lincoln's pocketwatch at the outbreak of the civil war.
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Secret Message in Abraham Lincoln's Pocket Watch

Every Known Photograph of Abraham Lincoln

Every known photograph taken of Abraham Lincoln from 1846 to his death in 1865.

The three songs that appear in order are:

Lincoln and Liberty - 1860 campaign song, written by Jesse Hutchinson of the Hutchinson Family Singers.

Dixie - Lincoln's favorite song; although strongly associated with the south and the Confederacy, it was actually composed by a northerner, Daniel Decatur Emmett.

Ashokan Farewell - The emotional theme song of the Ken Burns documentary "The Civil War". Many believe it was a song from that era, but it was in fact composed in 1982 by Jay Ungar. LINK: Youtube