Little Professor 
Presidential Memorializing continues spinning backwards in time, with the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library the latest fatuous exercise.
Wilson was born in Staunton Virginia, but his parents left town when he was four. From these slender roots the town has metastasized a Presidential Library, now to receive federal funding.
The Library represents double or triple dipping for Wilson. The Wilson Center was created four decades ago as a “living memorial” to Wilson. South of Washington lies a Wilson Bridge. 
It’s opening happened to fall during his centennial year, so he got the slot, despite having no known ties to the region or river.
Staunton needs the money, ’cause they got nothing. He spent more of his childhood elsewhere, his papers are elsewhere [“The archives microfilm collection includes the Wilson holdings at the Library of Congress and the National Archives. “]
What’s the answer? Showmanship!
“Rather than a timeline of facts and dates, the museum aims to turn history into a visceral experience. ”
The magic begins on their web page, where a lovely photo of black children is adorned with a lofty Wilson quote. His real feelings about black people were rather different, as reflected in his plug for “Birth of a Nation”. 
Invisible Men 
- Thanks to civilwarmemory for pointing to a recent post by John David Hoptak, a writer and Park Ranger at the Antietam National Battlefield.
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- Hoptak’s Antietam presentations on the battle and the contemporaneous drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation have stirred a vicious reaction from many Park visitors, unwilling to hear a discussion of Lincoln, slavery, or any of the real stakes in the Civil War.
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“If we should not celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, if Lincoln should be criticized for not freeing all the slaves with this revolutionary document, then why should we celebrate and laud the Declaration of Independence? the Constitution? the Founders?…There was a sizable portion of the population that wasn’t declared free to pursue their lives, their liberty, and happiness. Such criticism is almost always met with outrage. . . some of those most outraged by such criticism of the Founders are among those that declare Lincoln to be “the greatest murderer†in U.S. history and that the Emancipation Proclamation should not be celebrated.â€
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Civilwarmemory comments:
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“What I find so disturbing is the apparent number of Civil War enthusiasts who are unable to view emancipation from the perspective of the thousands of slaves who helped force the issue on the Union high command and eventually Lincoln himself by running away from their owners and aiding the efforts of the U.S. army in myriad ways. It’s as if emancipation began and ended with Lincoln…I’ve interviewed a number of Park Service personnel on this issue. For some it is simply enough to assume a perspective that has soldiers on both sides falling from the sky to butcher one another with little or no attention as to why. All that is left to do is explain how they did it. Even a cursory glance at our national memory of the war reveals a continued concentration on values that white Americans initially latched onto at the turn of the twentieth century as part of a movement towards reunion and reconciliation.”
A New Republic blog post on efforts to glide past the South’s stakes in the war sums up:
“The way of life they fought to preserve was not a set of morally neutral hillbilly customs, like playing the banjo and making apple butter; it was a way of life that specifically did include black slavery.“
Boyhood Home Revealed! 
Excitement reins at Ferry Farm, scene of George Washington cannoting to tell a lie 
and other legends. An archaeological dig has revealed the foundations of what is thought to be his childhood home.
The Ferry Farm drawing bares a remarkable resemblance to the house built near Washington’s birthplace in the early 20th Century. 
That house was built on a site misidentified by Washington’s adopted son, George Washington Custis.
Telltale Ferry Farm remnants include a masonic pipe and a type of gem often traded from India to West Africa, and presumably brought to Virginia through some path coming out of the slave trade.
You can go back to near the birth of the Father of Our Country, but you can’t escape Original Sin!
Signed, Sealed & Disappeared 
Barack Obama’s campaign has yanked the cheesy presidentish seal that has been called mocking, outrageous, and possibly illegal by somewhat fevered observers.
The real crime of course is burdening the eagle with the existing Obama graphic 
– it still looks like a small town electric co-op logo.
No word if the Reagan Library will drop or modify it’s presidential sealish jelly jar adorning design. 
That’s The Way God Planned It 
Tuesday is your day, Donald Trump and other fans of slavery nostalgia!
It’s the gala reopening of Beauvoir, home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, largely destroyed by politically correct Hurricane Katrina. The accompanying “Presidential Library” was wiped out completely by the avenging wind.
Terrible Swift Sword 
Small compensation for New Orleans, but we Americans are an optimistic people.
Tuesday will also be Davis’s 200th birthday., encouraging the warm feelings of confederate nostalgists towards the traitor. Promoters of the “”Other President” walk a careful but familiar line, lamenting the tragic war between brothers without ever quite explaining what it was about*
Beauvoir’s special day will be marked with flags, speeches, several more speeches, and countless men in itchy wool uniforms. Some sense of decorum is being observed however. The program ask that:
“All re-enactors please use back gate entrance.”
*slavery!
