Posts Tagged With: Levity

I’m always looking for ways to branch out here on BoothieBarn.  My goal is to educate and interact with people about the Lincoln assassination.  However, there is one particular demographic that remains elusive: kids.  It’s ironic, really.  In real life I’m an elementary school teacher and yet the part of history that interest me the most is one that would be particularly difficult to relate to children.  How can I teach, in a developmentally appropriate way, the complexity of the death of Abraham Lincoln?  Well, luckily I’ve found a new resource to make it much, much easier.  How do you teach kids about such a sensitive topic such as Lincoln’s death or the Civil War?  With that time tested tool, the coloring book.

I picked up this resource for a mere dollar and flipped to the back hoping to find a page that I could use to teach kids about the Lincoln assassination. Fate was one my side, and I now have this wonderful teaching tool:

Feel free to click and print this picture full size for you to use with your own kids. Drop off copies at your local library. Hand them out to neighborhood kids at play during the summer. Help get kids interested in history.

The real wonderful thing about coloring book pages is that they appeal to everyone, even adults. Why, with only a box of twelve colored pencils and a couple hours, I turned the above blank canvas into this piece of historical art:

Who ever said history couldn’t be fun?

eBay, that wonderful online auction house for the everyman, is full of unique objects up for sale. When not searching for a new, “Inflatable Unicorn Horn” for my cat, I tend to do searches for Lincoln assassination related things. Most of the time it’s the same old books and prints. Yawn… Last week, however, I found myself bidding on, and winning, some truly one-of-a-kind Lincoln assassination tchotchkes: conspirator pins!

Though little description came with the pins, it appears as though some history minded Lions Club members decided to make pins for themselves based on the different conspirators. Each pin contains an image and name of a conspirator, a description of their involvement in a couple words, and, on the side, their ultimate fate. The pins also contain the name of the Lions Club person for whom the pin was presumedly made for.

You’ll notice they made the understandable error of confusing Hartman Richter’s mug shot for Dr. Mudd. It also appears that Michael O’Laughlen and Edman Spangler got a bit more facial hair. I’ll also leave it up to you to decide how accurate their descriptions of each conspirator is.

There were impulse buys, but not ones that I regret…yet. It just goes to show you that, no matter what you’re looking for, eBay can surprise you sometimes. Now I’m going back to searching for more practical things like the most affordable can of unicorn meat.

For those out there who believe that John Wilkes Booth did not die at Garrett’s farm on April 26th, 1865, the following will surely validate your long-held beliefs.  After reading my post about his birthday, a Texas lawyer who has written a book on the subject of Booth’s escape sent me a picture he received just this day from a man he knows as “John David St. E. Helen George”.  Apparently this gentleman is also celebrating his 175th birthday today:

Coincidence? I think not!

Another researcher sent me a link to the following, hilarious, web comic regarding the Lincoln assassination. The entire comic is 38 pages long and really well done for a comic. It had me in stitches several times.  I would put the whole comic here if I could, but the language is R rated at some points. Still, it’s definitely worth sharing. Click one of the examples below or the link that follows to read the comic.

Lincoln vs Booth from Kittenberg.com