Abraham Lincoln grew up in Indiana. I grew up in Indiana. So did my ancestors. We didn’t live in the same century but lived in the same state. That shared geography matters. My grandparents had a photo of Lincoln that always hung in their house, and it now hangs in mine. I think this is part of why it always meant so much to me. I grew up hearing stories about him as someone to look up to.
When I think about history, I don’t imagine it as something distant or abstract. I think about landscapes–woods, farms, roads, small communities–and the people who moved through them. Lincoln’s Indiana wasn’t only the place where he was shaped; it was also home to countless ordinary families, including my own.
Some of my ancestors were alive during Lincoln’s lifetime. They experienced the same weather, the same rhythms of work, the same uncertainties of a young nation. They may never have met him, but they inhabited the same world.
That overlap helps ground my writing. It reminds me that history is lived locally before it is remembered nationally. faces in old photographs, places on familiar maps, and imagined moments of reading or thinking all help me enter that world more fully.
Current Projects
- My book: continuing careful, final revision of the middle chapters of a historical novel.
- Edward Bryant: ongoing planning and preparation for shorter publications
For me, images –of Lincoln, of ordinary people, of places–aren’t additions to the writing. They’re part of how I stay connected to the past as something lived, not merely studied.
Thanks for reading and walking alongside me.
The View From The Imaginarium 