The Stump, In Happier Times 
Washington State now boasts the replica of a structure built for a Presidential event which never occurred, standing proudly at a different location.
The “McKinley Stump” is in Chehalis Washington’s evocatively named Recreation Park. It stood in various parts of town 100 years, but finally succumbed to ants and rot.
It was created for President McKinley, but never used by him. Theodore Roosevelt did speak from the stump, as did William Howard Taft before he was President. No word on what role America’s Fattest President might have had in starting the deterioration.
Damp but Determined 
The draw your own Bush Presidential Library contest has a week to go, and the oddities mount. The Chronicle of Higher Education features one new entry, which involves putting the library beneath fountains of water, suspended above a “lagoon.”
The troubled recent history of public memorials and water be damned!
Now More Than Ever Forever! 
We now know that Tricia Nixon’s Iowa Mccain appearance was only the scene setter in the Nixon Cox family’s new adventures in politics.
Tricia’s husband Ed Cox had previously roused from his thirty year slumber to flirt with challenging Hillary Clinton for Senate, only to retreat. This time they are all in.
Cox is McCain’s New York State Chair, and son Christoper Nixon Cox, 
Richard Nixon’s first grandson, is state campaign Executive Director.
The familiar rituals of resume inflation are beginning. Buffalo Business First reports that Eddie “served under three U.S. Presidents.” but even his law firm biography claims only his father in law and something a fair distance from Reagan’s side:
“He served former President Nixon in the international arena and was general counsel to a major energy agency which financed synthetic fuels projects under President Reagan.”
And Reagan killed the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.
For you all you Presidential who-went-where-when obsessives, The 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry/ Civil War Musings blog has a roundup on Presidential visits to the Antietam battlefield near Washington.
With the special bonus of extensively documenting future President McKinley’s participation in the battle, where he heroically shuffled coffee to the front lines under fire.
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Community meetings on the proposed Oyster Bay Long Island Theodore Roosevelt museum are rolling along, with residents are asking Theodore Roosevelt Association President James Bruns some entertaining questions.
One questioner asked what exactly they’d put in the 100,000 square foot building since Roosevelt’s papers are at Harvard and the Library of Congress.
Bruns says they don’t need paper when they have pizazz!
“I don’t have to have original documents. If you want the real thing you can go to the Library of Congress. We do have some 2-dimensional items and some 3-dimensional ones. Seven percent of the museum will be a regular museum. The museum will be high tech. There will be few objects, but the finest we can find. It will be experiential using technology and interactive exhibits.”
Another pest inquired how much of the estimated $120 million cost is at hand.
“Mike Giardina asked, “How much money does the TRA have in the bank?”Mr. Bruns said they have pledges of $1 million.
Mr. Giardina: “And in the bank?”
Mr. Bruns, “I’m not going to divulge that.“
Mr. Gardina: “You have zero. You have no website*. Come on.”
[*They have one, but it’s pretty useless on the proposed museum] 
