A return to Lincoln’s haunts

Nearly 100 years ago, Springfield, Ill. poet Vachel Lindsay penned a poem, “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.” In 32 lines of verse, the poet spoke of the President stirred from his grave, walking the streets of the city he called home for more than half of his life, restless even in death because of unrest in the world. 

The central Illinois poet was troubled himself by the discord in the world in 1914. World War I had begun. 

Lindsay’s poem is powerful, but many of us who frequent Springfield know that it wasn’t just on a night a century ago that Lincoln’s spirit walked the streets of the capital city. 

Those of us who spend much time there, who study the 16^th President, his life and his legacy, know that, ghost-like being or not, the aura of Abraham Lincoln lives on in the town to which and the home of the people to whom he said he owed everything. 

In the rooms of the Old State Capitol or the Lincoln-Herndon Law Office,  in his home and along the streets he walked, if you stop, close your eyes for a second and open yourself to the possibility, it’s not at all hard to see this tall, lanky prairie lawyer in the city he called home. 

Because I live in mid-Missouri now, instead of an hour from Springfield, as I did for more than a decade, I don’t get to return to Lincoln’s adopted hometown as often as I once did. On Oct. 18, I returned for an opportunity of which I’ve dreamed for nearly two decades. I visited Springfield to speak about Abraham Lincoln. 

The occasion was the national conference of an organization in which I found tremendous value and through which I met vibrant leaders, encouraging mentors and brilliant communicators, when I was a member early in my corporate career—the Association for Women in Communications (AWC). The Springfield chapter of the organization served as host of the event, which has been held in a number of large communities across the nation through the years. 

One of my bucket list items was to speak on the national level sometime, somewhere. Another was to deliver a speech about Abraham Lincoln.  

I’d fulfilled the second of these wishes on a small scale on a number of occasions when I lived in the Bloomington-Normal area. I’ll bet if you asked them, you’d be surprised at the number of Sunrise Speakers Toastmasters members who could tell you that I opened their eyes a number of times at our 7 a.m. meetings with information that inspired them to learn more about Abraham Lincoln. As I shared my lifelong passion for his story, I guess I whetted their interest in him a little, too. If so, I did what I hoped. 

But, I’d never spoken about Lincoln in Springfield, the city where his legacy lives and inspires every single day.

On Friday afternoon, nearly 100 professional communicators gathered to hear “What Communicators Can Learn from Abraham Lincoln.” As I’ve studied Lincoln, I’ve noticed a number of similarities between things he did in his life and things communicators do in theirs. I believe there are 10 lessons that we can take from his life and example that can help us in our own social media efforts, our careers and our lives. 

I won’t share them all here today, but will give you a hint. For the last few minutes, you’ve been practicing one of them. To be like Lincoln, read. Read every day – and share what you read. Share it in a conversation over lunch or dinner, in a blog post or on Facebook, in a tweet.

This weekend, more than 100 women from across the nation gathered in Springfield to hear speakers, ranging from a Paralympic champion to this communicator who is more than a little bit nutty over a President from the Prairie State. I’d like to think they left with a bit more enthusiasm and knowledge about Lincoln than they had when they came. I do know they left inspired by the example, enthusiasm and nurturing of this dynamic group of women – and thankful to the efforts of the Springfield Chapter who showed them why the community and its people meant so much to the development of the president whose legacy is honored there.

Yes, Lincoln does still walk in Springfield – and not just in the light of the moon.

Little things are bigger in a place called home

I was in my hometown the past few days—getting to see people I love, do things I enjoy, visit places I cherish. 

I spent time with my parents and my young adult grandson, I attended a writer’s workshop and concert at Carl Sandburg’s birthplace, and I visited two libraries that helped in many ways to nurture my interests and provide resources as I completed my late-in-life college degree. 

It’s funny how such things, which appear small on first glance, can be so large when viewed through a stronger lens. 

My parents, as do I, continue to grow older – no brilliant observation, but one that grows clearer over time. Our time together, because of this, becomes more precious with each visit.

My grandson, once in our lives day in and day out, has grown up and no longer lives in the same community in which we do. It’s a joy to get to know the older him as he discovers who he is and where his life will take him.

The Sandburg Days writer’s workshop, an annual affair for me for a number of years, has become with distance a rare treat. Yet each time I attend, regardless of presenting author, I grow myself as a writer – and remember with renewed clarity how much and why I love what I do – putting words on paper.

Something that I find most encouraging about Galesburg’s event in honor of its hometown poet is the way the “Festival for the Mind” celebrates a diversity of arts, from poetry to photography, from encouraging budding writers to showcasing gifted musicians. It’s a special treat when one of those musicians happens to be a high school classmate come back to the ‘Burg to play a few tunes. 

I can’t remember a time I didn’t love books or libraries – from the first ones my mother read to me as a small child, to the ones I chose from book order forms in elementary school, to the diversity of genres I’ve savored as an adult. 

One thing is certain. No matter what community I called home through the years, one place always made it so – the library. And, of all the libraries I’ve visited in the past six decades, two stand out above all others – the Galesburg Public Library and Seymour Library at Knox College. 

At tables in the corners each of these repositories, I took sanctuary so I could study in tranquility. In the stacks I found books about subjects I was assigned and those I enjoyed. I savored and used as reference volumes about regional topics, looked with longing at names of people from West Central Illinois who worked with words – Carl Sandburg, Earnest Elmo Calkins, John E. Hallwas, Martin Litvin and more. 

As I did, I often mused, “Someday, perhaps, my name will be found upon these shelves.”

Though it still doesn’t appear as author, today I delivered to the archives at each library a volume I had the privilege to see even before it was a book – “Abraham Lincoln Traveled this Way: The America Lincoln Knew“ with photographs by McLean County’s Robert Shaw and narrative by Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame. 

Way in the back, on a line that credits those who helped to edit the copy, you’ll find this name: Ann Tracy Mueller. 

It’s a little thing – that string of 15 letters and two spaces – but gigantic to a former Galesburg resident who hoped for a half-century to add, if even a little, to the literary tradition of her hometown. 

In a way, perhaps, I have. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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The power of words and music: Dan Fogelberg remembered

As I was scrolling down my Facebook page on a recent evening, I stumbled across a post on late singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg’s tribute page. 

The post included an image of a letter a young girl had written to Fogelberg, asking the meaning of a line in one of his songs. What made the image all the more exciting, all the more powerful, was Fogelberg’s handwritten reply in return. 

He answered, that yes, though the words were literal, the related metaphorical meaning was much as she had suspected. 

The song in question was my favorite Fogelberg tune, “Same Old Lang Syne.” It’s a song reportedly based on a real event in Fogelberg’s life—a chance encounter with an old girlfriend in the grocery store on Christmas Eve. 

The tune captures all the surprise, awkwardness, giddiness, memories, regret, warmth and more that such an encounter elicits. It has an uncanny ability to draw its listener into the song, to invite her to watch as a silent observer as the two experience more emotions than they must have imagined possible in such a short time. 

Perhaps the reasons it struck me so strongly, years ago when I first heard it, and as I listened to it on tapes, CDs or car radios through the decades, are twofold—I’ve seen the song from the outside looking in and inside looking out. 

I spent nearly 30 years of my life in a grocery store, from the high school days when I met my first steady boyfriend in the check-out lane until I was a middle-aged mother and grandmother, watching much younger coworkers re-live those same excitement-filled moments. 

Grocery store clerks see and hear a lot. 

We witness those hugs and “Oh my gawds” when parted lovers home for the holidays see each other—sometimes after months apart, sometimes years. We watch warmly as widowers or divorcees bump into someone from long ago, and we can see a spark, long smoldering, begin to re-ignite. And, yes, we see those who have their regrets, bumping into old flames they let slip away, those who have built a life with someones new. 

And, too, because I lived in a rather small community, it wasn’t unlikely for me to have my own “Same Old Lang Syne” moments. 

On more than one occasion, I’d look up and see, across the counter, someone I’d met years earlier in the check-out lane, the library, the old neighborhood, or in a small town nearby—and had dated a time or two or a season. 

As with Fogelberg and his “old lover in the grocery store,” it was awkward at first, giddy at times, and sometimes warm—for the lives that touch ours, no matter how fleeting, often do bring with them memories worth remembering. It doesn’t take a six-pack from the liquor store or a songwriter’s recollection to warm us with memories of days gone by, even when we’re ever so thankful of the love we know today. 

Though Peoria’s Dan Fogelberg, singer/storyteller to the world, didn’t have his encounter in the frozen food aisle of the store where I worked all those years, I saw scores of Dans and lovers meet again.

Through his words, from time to time, as the song played in my mind, those others faded and Dan came into view. Tonight, writing this, I see his face again and, as I do, the music plays anew. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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A shower of words

If you’re a writer or someone who whips up dreams or solves problems, you know how the best brain blasts always come at the most inopportune times—such as when you’re in the shower.

For me it never fails, I’ve slept like a rock, exhausted from writing for days on end, or I’ve tossed and turned all night, listening as my muse tell me where it’s taking me next in my latest written work. The ideas either come or they don’t, but one thing is for certain. As I stand in the shower, the words come pouring down faster than the drops of water. I’m there with no pen, no paper, and a shower of words and ideas that would drown a cruise ship. 

To celebrate a special anniversary last year, my husband tried hard to get me to go to Hawaii—the real place—but because we were planning to move at the time, making job changes, and more, I said, “No, not now, please.”

The week of anniversary rolled around and I drove from our new home in Missouri to the apartment he was renting near his job in Illinois until his pending retirement date. 

We left the apartment one morning to go out for a nice lunch, run some errands, and leave for our destination. 

Remember how I said, “Not Hawaii. Not this year.”

He took me anyway. 

We opened our motel room and saw a rainforest shower, a volcano pouring into our hot tub, a sauna, and a room with thatched roof and tiki torches. We were in Hawaii—on the prairies of Illinois. He’d rented us one of those themed hotel rooms. The atmosphere of the islands was there—for a whole lot less money. 

We, both in our sixties, were like a couple of little kids in that room, hoping from one attraction to the next, giggling when we discovered a bidet in the Jack and Jill bathroom. 

We were having a wonderful time, until I decided to take a shower. This rainforest didn’t just have trees and tropical vegetation painted on the walls, it also had shower heads with all sorts of knobs and spouts and sprayers. I turned it on, and the next thing I knew water was coming at me from everywhere.  It was pounding my yes, drenching my hair, beating against my body. It was liquid sensory overload. 

And, it was a lot like those word showers I have at home, when the story or blog or news article ideas come when I don’t have a waterproof pen and paper, a bucket in which to catch the ideas before they are lost forever down the drain. 

A big fluffy towel helped me to wipe the water from my eyes, to see my Hawaiian room again on that special vacation day. 

Maybe that’s why the torrents of words come pouring down on me at home, so that as I step from the shower, and pat myself dry, the best ideas have soaked through to my core, to fall as thoughts onto a page, helping me to bring my readers to our destinations in the posts within this blog. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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