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Lincoln

A Kind of Solution


The writer was drinking himself to death. In his first flush of freedom—he had come to Iowa from a land ruled by a military dictatorship—he drowned himself in vodka, and when for the third day running he was rushed to the emergency room with a blood alcohol level that would have killed another man, he was committed for observation. The date was September 10, 2001. That evening, more than eight hours after his last drink, the writer was still dead drunk. The judge who signed his commitment order called the next day, incredulous.

The Poetry of Abraham Lincoln

Not far from where I live in east central Illinois, the father of Abraham Lincoln lies buried. Though I've lived out here in this open land for more than two decades, I had not visited Thomas Lincoln's grave until last year, after my father died. He is buried in the east where I'm from, and I guess I needed a nearby place to mourn. Or maybe I just missed my father that fall day I stopped by tiny Shiloh Cemetery to stand where Abraham Lincoln once stood. That great man knew words and how to say them, and I began to imagine his voice as he lowered his head and whispered.