History? Myth? Mister?

[FrodeauxB at aol.com]

Realizing this is, to paraphrase Monty Python, "...something entirely 
different," we 
thought you might enjoy this bit of real life...well, er-history. Beware, the 
Hobbits are restless.
>From slate(5-11):
Finally, for a fine bit of rhetorical sleight of hand, enjoy this
Post editorial. The Post has spent the last two years documenting
and eulogizing the tragic demise of an historic tree at Abraham
Lincoln's summer residence, under which, so the story went, the
president rested and recuperated from the stresses of the
Civil War, and perhaps even composed the Emancipation
Proclamation. Inconveniently, it has now been determined that the
tree, previously identified in the Post as a "275-year-old"
copper beech, was at most a ripe 140 when it was cut down before
a teary-eyed crowd of over 100 last February. So, do the math. If
by chance it did exist circa bellum, the six-foot-four president
would have squashed it, not shaded under it. Woops. Chagrin and
bear it? No, no... "When something is history for a long time and
ceases to be history, that, too, is history. What matters, now,
is not the tree but the importance the tree had. Our reverence
for Lincoln; the place he holds; all of this, again proven." The
editorial then endorses plans to "plant the beech's
seedlings--testament to the power of myth[--]in hallowed spots
all over this union." 

TTFN

frodeauxb