Lincoln in Black and White

A Harvard scholar takes a look at the Great Emancipator

The Wall Street Journal: There have been 14,000 books written about Lincoln, according to you, more than any other American. Isn't that enough?

Mr. Gates: The only person who has received more attention in print is Jesus, which is astonishing. But, no one has done a book or film from my particular perspective.

Yet you grew to like him even more after delving into his racial attitudes, correct?

The difference between Lincoln and everybody else is that he had a capacity to grow. In the last speech of his life, Lincoln said for the first time in the American presidency: "I want to give the right to vote to [a few] black men." He thought the Declaration of Independence included black men. Thomas Jefferson didn't do that.

Barack Obama swore the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible and references Lincoln frequently in speeches.

Barack Obama is the logical extension of Lincoln's decision to abolish slavery in the South and his embrace of black rights at the end of his life. Also, Lincoln was the Great Reconciliator "with malice toward none": That's Barack Obama.

In the film you show "Abraham Obama," a work by street artist Ron English that melds Lincoln and Obama's faces into a single image. Do you think the comparison is appropriate?

When we filmed they gave me a poster. I'm looking forward to having Abraham Obama sign it.

Dewey at the Super Bowl

Douglas J. Rowe, AP Entertainment Writer, reviewed NBC's telecast of the Super Bowl. He had kind words for Al Michaels, the announcer and John Michaels, commentator.

Michaels and Madden played off each other as well as ever, too.

When Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger went over to the sideline trying to decide what play to call, Michaels said:

"He has a 150 to 200 plays on that wristband so maybe they needed some help with the Dewey decimal system to find it."

"Just imagine what the print looks like on that," Madden responded.

"You gotta have Ted Williams' eyesight," Michaels theorized.

Gotta love a football announcer that brings in the Dewey Decimal system.

Monarch Migration

PBS program: Alien Empire

Monarch butterflies have one of the world’s most fascinating migration paths. Every fall, thousands of the black-and-orange butterflies fly west to their wintering grounds in California

and Mexico, covering the trees there with their bright shimmering wings. The remarkable sight attracts scores of tourists: Pacific Grove, CA, has earned the nickname “Butterfly Town, U.S.A.” for the host of Monarchs that gather there every year. Come spring, the butterflies fly back to their summer homes, where they will lay eggs and die. A typical butterfly will make just one round trip during its lifetime.

For centuries, people puzzled over exactly where the millions of Monarchs that spend their winters in Mexico and California came from. But in 1937, a researcher named F. A. Urquhart began putting wing tags on the butterflies, allowing him to track some of the travelers. In the 1950s, he expanded the project, enlisting more than 3,000 volunteers across the country in his Insect Migration Association. For more than 20 years, the volunteers helped track the marked insects, contacting Urquhart whenever they found or saw a marked Monarch.

The results of the tracking project astounded many people. One tagged butterfly was tracked along a 1,870-mile route. Originally tagged on September 18, 1957 in Highland Creek, Ontario, it was spotted again in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, four months later. Of course, the butterfly’s actual flight distance was even longer than a map suggests, because the insects don’t fly in a straight line. They must dodge mountains, fight against winds, and flee predators on their perilous journeys.

Today, thousands of people continue to tag monarchs in an effort to study their migration. In 1997, for instance, the research organization Monarch Watch helped volunteers place small sticky wing tags on more than 75,000 butterflies. And in 1998, it distributed more than 200,000 tags to people interested in helping out with the annual tracking project. While the group isn’t sure how many of the 1998 tags actually made it onto butterflies’ wings, at least 35 marked monarchs were spotted at their wintering grounds in Mexico. One had flown at least 1,844 miles southwest from where it was tagged in Campbell, MN, to its roosting spot in El Rosario, Mexico. But some tagged monarchs took off in unexpected directions. One butterfly flew about 550 miles due west from western Kentucky to Lindsborg, KS, where trackers Grant Linder and Hannah Giles spotted it.

Two questions, a visit

In the afternoon I was asked two reference questions, and Dr. Eisenberg visited.

First, a graduate student who said she had four kids at home came to do work on her PhD dissertation, and wanted books on differentiated instruction. That proved to be, as I anticipated, far too specialized an academic subject for a public library. Hewlett-Woodmere has quite limited book resources on educations (Dewey 371 and 378), but database resources are plentiful. I got her on Galenet and ERIC. That pleased her.

A website (of the Macomb, Michigan School District) defines Differentiated Instruction as a flexible approach to teaching in which the teacher plans and carries out varied approaches to content, process, and product in anticipation of and in response to student differences in readiness, interests, and learning needs (Tomlinson, 1995, p. 10).

A college website has an entire web page on differentiated instruction.

Second, a young woman who turned out to be a teacher (high school, perhaps) was looking for a book containing scripts on Twilight Zone episodes. HWPL does own such a book: As timeless as infinity: the complete Twilight Zone scripts of Rod Serling. Well, it's not complete.

Hardly complete; there were 5 seasons (36, 29, 37, 18, and 36 episodes). At any rate, the script the teacher wanted wasn't in the book. It was The Shelter (episode 3, Season 3). She planned to use it by juxtaposing it to some other element. Sounded interesting. She had a printout with other titles from other libraries, and was planning to do some more searching.

I told her about LILRC (the Long Island Libraries Resources Council), a consortium of Long Island libraries. Her home library, I told her, would be able to giver her a pass to, say, Hofstra University, if she found that Hofstra had something useful. "I didn't know about that," she said, adding "and I thought I knew libraries pretty well."

Dr. Eisenberg, a retired MD who visits the Library every once in a while (to get books for his wife), stops and schmoozes with as many people as possible when he does so. He can stay for a solid fifteen minutes with one person. Yesterday I told him about the new book I'm reading, Lessons in disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the path to war in Vietnam. We had a short discussion about Bundy, the Viet Nam War, and presidents. Always pleasant to speak with him.

Jewish sport?

A patron came in (3.15pm) and asked for this book:

Dewey call number: 796.83 B

Author: Allen Bodner.

I just don't get why sports are in the 700s. Yes, the 700s are arts and recreation. Yes, the 790s are recreational and performing arts -- but why? Boxing and puppet theater in the same slot? This Dewey Decimal System is a conundrum wrapped in enigma.

791.572 M is a book by Jay Mohr about his stint in SNL, and right after it, 791.602 G is a book by William Goldman, novelist (Marathon Man ) and screenwriter (The Princess Bride ) was invited to be a judge at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1989, followed by The nature of the beast, by Hans Brick (791.8 B), an animal trainer.

Geez.