Katharine & Emily's Epic Illinoisian Adventure: Day 4

Today rocked! Other than the part where this website wasn't letting me post anything, anyway. I started off the day watching a tv show about a $1000 ice cream sunday and then we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. It was good. Thats really all there is to say about it.
Then we went to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, or ALPLM for short, and that isn't even that short. The first guide we met told us that we HAD to watch the Ghosts in the Library movie, it was a "must see". The he pointed at Em and said, "Well, YOU know." How did she know? Why her? Its a mystery.
In the first half of the museum we checked out Lincoln's boyhood and early political life. I personally enjoyed what I like to think of as "Pimp Lincoln", which is a wax figure of him wooing Mary Todd. He has his arm on the back of the sofa and he's looking at her like "How you doin?" I had the disturbing experience of watching a mother explain to her child about slavery- I won't even go into her word choice there, but it weirded me out but good. And then Tim Russert gave a us a presentation on the election of 1860 as it would have run today. Obviously he wasn't really there. It was a video.
In the second half we saw Lincoln's White House life and death. The reproduction of his funeral was eerie and effective. The Ghosts in the Library movie? Not so much. The Sixth Sense had already spoiled the ending for me. That historian/soldier at Vicksburg was already dead! In a side note I new every song they played over the loudspeakers from my Civil War Ballads CD. Talk about nerds.
Next was Lincoln's actual house. The parking was free because the machine was broken. This prompted a discussion on the ethics of paying for your parking if it was an honor system to begin with. I argued that our consciences were supposed to make us pay, seeing as we were visiting Honest Abe here. Sean contested that Lincoln would never have charged for parking. WWLD?
The Lincoln house was not attractively decorated inside, although it was pretty on the outside. The tour guide was not awesome, but I loved the fact that when someone stepped outside the designated area an alarm went off. I wish we'd had that when I was a tour guide. I also found Lincoln's shaving mirror where Sarah Vowell said she tried to jump up and see herself and set off the alarm.
After lunch was Lincoln's tomb. (Anyone sensing a theme here?) The Museum of Funeral Customs is only open by appointment, so I had to settle for getting my picture taken with the sign. The tour guide caught us on the way in, and made us listen to the history of the tomb itself. Lots of symbols, but none of them particularly subtle, I must say. Gee, what does that eagle stand for?
It was one fine tomb, I will say that, and I think Lincoln deserves it. But what I want to know is: where exactly is his body? Under that slab with his name on it? In it somehow? Behind the wall? Under the whole structure? What about the rest of the family? These questions plague me. On the way out I rubbed Lincoln's nose for luck, and that may have been the best Lincoln thing of all. I think Abe and I had a moment there.
On a whim, to move past the Lincoln theme, we checked out a coffee shop Shawn had just read about. It was INSIDE the Goodwill store. It was amazing. I got a speech from the baristo (or is a dude a barista too?) about how he was there because he didn't want to be a corporate drone anymore, and then got to drink a $4 coffee while watching folks shop at Goodwill. Wrong? Maybe. But it was interesting.
At the end of the day we checked out the University of Illinois and Springfield Lake, and then we came back to Urbana. Now I'm listening to Emily play banjo while I wrestle with the computer and its just like the old days.