Today is the anniversary of the day in 1860 when 11 year old Grace Bedell wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln, a homely candidate for President of the United States.

Hon A B Lincoln…

Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Clearly, Grace Bedell was the first-ever modern political consultant, recognizing that looks matter when it comes to moving the American electorate. That is a dubious distinction. But we know Grace Bedell is the Mother of Political Consultants, because she got results. The candidate who would become president answered her just four days later:

Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age – They, with their mother, constitute my whole family – As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher
A. Lincoln

That was a fence straddling answer if there ever was one – responding to a request with a question. But Lincoln must have taken her seriously. He grew a beard shortly afterwards and now we can’t picture him without one.

There is no record of Grace Bedell responding to Lincoln’s answer, though one account describes a meeting between the two shortly after the election, when the president-elect’s train passed through her town.

Wikipedia credits the Schenectady Gazette for Grace’s account of her face-to-face meeting with Lincoln.

“He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform,” she recalled. “‘Gracie,’ he said, ‘look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.’ Then he kissed me. I never saw him again.”

Today, a presidential candidate having a private moment and a kiss with an 11 year old girl would automatically throw the election to his opponent. But 1860 was a different time. Four years later Grace wrote again, this time to ask Lincoln for a job with the Treasury Department.

I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation ther?[sic] I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influences a word from you would secure me a good paying situation which would at least enable me to support myself if not to help my parents, this, at present – is my highest ambition.

Nice try, but this one met with considerably less success then the beard –o-gram. I guess you don’t get everything you ask for, even if you take the time to put it in a letter. And remember, being an 11 year old girl is much cuter and more influential (with politicians) than being a 15 year old girl. Timing is Everything.

When has someone taken your advice and benefitted from it?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I spend so much time doing my work-from-home job on the computer, I’ve set up a desk in my bedroom so I can take quickie naps when a work lull allows for it.

Lately I’ve been having this recurring dream where I become lost in a storm. Unsure of my bearings, I don’t know what to pay attention to anymore.

My world is transformed into a blizzard of information bits, all of them flying past my head in a swirling cloud of text and images that seems driven by some unyielding, spontaneously generated wind. Too tiny to catch but too big to ignore, each individual know-flake feels terribly significant until I look closely enough to see that it is made up of absolutely nothing. As I stumble through these mounting piles of apparently urgent but ultimately pointless distractables, I have a growing sensation that I am missing something crucial that I will never, ever find.

I always wake up the same way – tangled in the electronic device cords that form a hot, dusty web in the tiny space between my desk and the wall.

What does it mean?

Desperately,
Digital Dreamer.

I told Digital Dreamer she should stop sleeping in the same room with the computer. Your brain and the Internet are just two different types of electronic networks, and it is not healthy to bunk your precious noggin so close to all that commotion. Try resting next to a houseplant instead.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Today is the (supposed) anniversary of the (rumored) incident involving Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev hammering for emphasis with his shoe during a diatribe at the United Nations in 1960.

I was 5 years old at the time, so I don’t remember many of the details, but it did make a significant impression on me that a guy could get so much attention by taking off his shoe and banging it on a hard surface. When I tried it at the dinner table, I found out the rumors were true!

Did the incident really happen? Accounts differ. Some say he merely waved the shoe while pounding the desk with his fist. Others note that he couldn’t have removed the shoe while sitting at his U.N. desk, because the desk was too small for him to reach under there and he was too fat to bend over while seated. One account claims the shoes were new and painful, so he took them off before sitting down. When he got wound up and wanted to drive home the point, he noticed a shoe nearby and took advantage of the situation. A crime of opportunity.

Khruschev’s tirade was the most famous angry thing (possibly) done with a shoe up to the Richard Reid “shoe bomber” incident in 2002. In both cases, there is no video evidence to verify the incident for future generations, though You Tube is full of attempts to re-create Khruschev’s rant.

Whether or not it actually happened, for Cold War kids like me, the bogeyman became an angry old bald man banging his shoe, telling us the kids will become Communists and shouting “We Will Bury You!”. And now I have become an angry old bald man whose feet hurt. Coincidence? I don’t think so!

Describe your favorite pair of shoes.

Here’s a fresh note from our perennial sophomore, Bubby Spamden of Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hey Mr. C.,

I know people your age like to gripe about us high school kids because we’re “soft” and “lazy” and “ungrateful” and we’re addicted to our “gadgets.” I know I’m guilty on all counts. But my Life Skills teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, says you guys weren’t all that different when you were in high school. He says every generation is accused of being dumber and weaker and less excellent by the generations that came earlier. And while overall test scores may be down a bit, the pressure to be super as an individual keeps going up and up and up.

What do I mean?

There’s this girl – Brianna Amat. She managed to get on the football team at Pinckney High School in Michigan because she’s such a good kicker on the girl’s soccer team. Fair enough, I guess. But then she went and got voted to be the Homecoming Queen and got to go out on the football field at halftime and get a tiara put on her head while she was wearing her uniform! And then when the Pinckney Pirates were one point behind in the second half (because she missed a point-after in the first half), she kicked the field goal that beat their archrival, Grand Blanc!

So she managed to corner two of the most prized roles in high school in the very same night – homecoming queen and football hero. The only top roles she left on the table are The Kid Who Always Has Money and The Kid Whose Parents Are Never Home. That’s pretty amazing. It means she’s probably got, like, a record percentage of other students at the school with a crush on her. And it lifts up the bar for anybody else who wants to be really, really celebrated.

People say kids today are a lot more open to all kinds of people doing different things they aren’t “supposed” to do. That might be true, but I don’t think anybody else will ever be able to equal Brianna’s feat, even though I know for a fact that there are a couple of guys at Wendell Wilkie High who would very much like to be Homecoming Queen. No big deal, they just really feel comfortable in tiaras.

Anyway, I guess the point is that not everybody my age is good-for-nothing. Some are good-at-everything. And some, like Brianna Amat, are living out pretty incredible stories.

Your Pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that forty years ago, as both homecoming queen and football hero, Brianna would have been required by unwritten high school law to date herself. So I’m glad to see things have changed. Compared to the old days, there are many more opportunities for high school kids to get that feeling of being celebrated today. Brianna gets our attention because she happened to corral two of the classic favorites.

What was the high school honor you most wanted to win?