Heart of Lincoln Land

OK, back to Lincoln now. I’ve created a new Lincoln T-shirt design, entitled "80s Abe", that blends my Lincoln and 80s interests. The T-shirts are available in black (shown), blue, and green on the Lincoln Apparel website, at my Etsy store, and at Springfield Novelties and Gifts on the 200 block of South 6th Street in historic downtown Springfield.

I’ve always wanted to create a "full front" print design, where the design fills up most or all of the front of the T-shirt. I’ve always loved how they look, and how intricate they often are. This is my first such design. I had a lot of fun making it!

This design was inspired by the famous "crew cut" portrait of Lincoln taken in February of 1865. As an 80s fan and a Lincoln fan, I’ve always loved this striking portrait of Lincoln. It shows Lincoln with an unusually short "crew cut" style haircut, perhaps because at this time sculptor Clark Mills was creating a life mask of Lincoln’s face. The plaster used to create the mask stuck to his hair, so Lincoln needed his hair cut short.

In the 1980s, this style of haircut became popular. So did bright neon colors, which I’ve always liked. It seemed only fitting that as a Lincoln fan, an 80s fan, and an artist, I’d create a T-shirt using this picture of Lincoln and bright 80s colors.

I figured that a design of this nature would look awesome as a "full front" print. Furthermore, it was simple enough that I could use it to "test" full front printing, but complex enough to be interesting and see how it would work before I made a very complex and intricate full front print design.

The results were spectacular, and I plan to make many more "full front" print T-shirts. The "80s Abe" represents a Lincoln for my generation, and for newer generations that have come to love the 80s. Lincoln, his words, and his memory have been invoked by every generation through the ages, and the 80s were no different. During that time, the "house divided" became a metaphor for the division between the Western democracies and the communist Eastern bloc countries, and his words were often used to extoll the virtues of democracy and promote its spread.

The fight for Lincoln’s ideals continues today. I chose to print this design on American Apparel, a sweatshop free, made in America T-shirt brand. I don’t think Lincoln would believe in sweatshop labor, so I won’t use brands of T-shirts that are made that way. I think he would want things to be made ethically, in a manner in which the workers have rights, so I make sure to make my T-shirts in accordance with his beliefs. These T-shirts are soft, comfortable, and durable, too – and I think Lincoln would like that!

Enjoy the T-shirt, enjoy Lincoln and the 80s, and feel good about it, too!

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Here’s a schedule of events being held for Lincoln’s 201st Birthday in Springfield. I plan to be at as many of them as I can!

I normally attend the Painter Lectures at the Lincoln Home and the Lincoln Symposium at the Old State Capitol. This year I’m definitely attending the special artifact display at the Museum on the 11th, and possibly the penny unveiling earlier that day. The discussion on the 14th at the Hilton also sounds interesting since it involves emancipation, a Lincoln subject I have always been interested in. I’ll probably be at the discussion at the Lincoln Home on the 13th as well.

I’ll be wearing my Lincoln T-shirts throughout the celebration (one of which is pictured above, which is a limited edition T-shirt for the Bicentennial). You can find them at the Lincoln Apparel website and at Springfield Novelties and Gifts in historic downtown Springfield on 6th Street, between Monroe and Adams.

Happy Lincoln’s Birthday!

Thursday, the 11th (Lincoln’s Birthday Eve):
* Unveiling of the new, redesigned Lincoln penny at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, beginning at 9:30 in the morning. Thousands of collectors are expected. The penny is being redesigned for the Lincoln Bicentennial; tomorrow is the last day Lincoln will be 200 years old.
* Artifact Vigil at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum: Several Lincoln artifacts will be on display, including a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, the inkwell Lincoln used to write his First Inaugural Address, the original clock from the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices, and more. Admission to this special event will be free after 5:30. There will also be presentations in the Union Theater at 6:30 and 8:15. The event will run until 10:00 pm.
* At the Vachel Lindsay Home at 6, Marc Aronson, author of "A History Beyond Black and White", will be giving a presentation.

Lincoln’s 201st Birthday, Friday, February 12th:
* This year’s theme for the annual Painter Lectures at the Lincoln Home is "Election of a President". It runs in the morning from 9 until noon. It is free.
* There will be a luncheon at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (costing $25) featuring author Richard Fox at noon.
* The annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium at the Old State Capitol will be from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. This year’s theme is "Lincoln’s Critics". This event is free.
* The annual banquet will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It will be easier to get into than last year, when President Obama attended. It costs $85, and Harold Holzer will be the speaker.
* At Lincoln Land Community College, John Lupton will give a talk at 9 on Lincoln forgeries. It is free.
* Also at Lincoln Land, there will be an exhibit of Lincoln posters.
* There will be children’s storytelling programs (featuring Springfield Lincoln presenter Fritz Klein) at the Old State Capitol at 10 and at the Lincoln Home at 1.
* A time capsule featuring items from the Lincoln Bicentennial will be filled at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum during a brief ceremony at 1.
* The annual American Legion pilgrimage to the Tomb will be at 10:30.

Saturday, February 13th:
* The VFW will hold a pilgrimage to the Lincoln Tomb at 2:30.
* There will be a presentation entitled "Working for the Father: Lincoln’s Hired Help and Faith Communities" at the Lincoln Home at 1. It is free.

Sunday, February 14th:
* There will be a presentation at the Hilton entitled Emancipation and the Dream of Freedom: From Slavery to the White House at 1.

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On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered a “few appropriate remarks” at the newly-created national cemetery at Gettysburg. The speech contained only 272 words and lasted maybe 3 minutes, far shy of the main speaker Edward Everett’s speech, which lasted 2 hours. Many people attending the event did not realize that President Lincoln had given a speech until after he had given it.

However, the speech was soon recognized as a masterpiece. It became an eloquent embodiment of the ideas of freedom, democracy, and equality, and of the sacrifices made to maintain, and improve, those things. Down through the ages, its words have been interpreted countless different ways and for many different purposes. It has been memorized by countless schoolchildren, and I can recite it from memory.

Within my lifetime, the words of the Gettysburg Address have been used on both the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and at the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It’s been used in advertising and in political campaigns and speeches, including Obama’s. The immortal and multicultural nature of the Gettysburg Address inspired me to create this T-shirt.

I made each of the 272 words of the speech (in red on the T-shirt) a different font, to reflect different eras and different cultures. I spent many hours tweaking the fonts to get them to play well together and look nice. I added this on top of a large blue picture of Abraham Lincoln, along the right side of his face. The picture of Lincoln is based off a portrait of him taken on November 8, 1863, 11 days before he gave the Gettysburg Address. I felt it was fitting and proper to use a portrait of Lincoln that was taken at around the same time as the address.

As finishing touches, I added Lincoln’s signature, the date (November 19, 1863), and the title, “Address Delivered at the Cemetery at Gettysburg”. This is from the so-called “Bliss copy” of the address, the last revision Lincoln made of the address and the text most commonly used as the standard text for the address.

Now you can contribute to the immortality of the address – and of the man who gave it – by wearing them both on a T-shirt. Neat, isn’t it? Check out the Lincoln Apparel website and my Etsy shop for my new Lincoln "Immortal Words at Gettysburg" T-shirts. The T-shirts are screen printed, and they are 100% cotton and are made right here in the U.S.A.

Here’s some more fun facts about the Gettysburg Address:

* There are only 10 sentences in the Gettysburg Address.
* Lincoln likely spent several weeks working on his address. Lincoln was known to take his time writing speeches, polishing them until they were “perfect”.
* No, Lincoln didn’t write it on the back of an envelope on the train to Gettysburg. The ride was bumpy and it was only 70 minutes long. In addition, none of the surviving copies appear on an envelope and the earliest known copy is on White House stationery.
* Lincoln likely did finish working on his address at the Wills House, where he stayed in Gettysburg the night before the speech.
* There are 5 different surviving copies of the address in Lincoln’s hand known today. These are known as the Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft, and Bliss copies (in that order). They all differ slightly. Supposedly there is a 6th copy (the delivery copy) of the address in Lincoln’s hand but it has not been found.
* The Everett copy is the one that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum here in Springfield has.
* The Nicolay and Hay copies are at the Library of Congress. The Bancroft copy is at Cornell University, and the Bliss copy is in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House (which was Lincoln’s office during his time).
* The words “under God” were added in the Everett copy.
* The last three copies were made as souvenirs. The Bliss copy was made because the Bancroft copy did not fit the format the printer was going to use properly. The dates and the titles were added in these.

Enjoy the new T-shirts and have some Lincoln fun!

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Yay! I finally have my new Lincoln T-shirts I blogged about earlier available now. I put them up on my website, Lincoln Apparel, today, after taking pictures and writing descriptions and Web pages for them. I’m working on getting them up in my Etsy store, too. It took a lot longer than I thought, but they turned out really well and I am pleased with them. They have the design pictured to the right, which I created, screen printed onto them, and they are available in blue, red, and black. They are 100% cotton T-shirts and are union made in the USA. They are comfortable and they look great!

The design is entitled, “Back to Springfield”. I wanted to portray Lincoln as if he came back to his hometown for his 200th birthday this year. I always thought it’d be neat if Lincoln was around to witness the 200th year of his life. This inspired me to base the design on the last known photographic portrait of him taken on February 5, 1865. To represent Lincoln coming back to Springfield, I wanted him to be standing in front of a recognizable modern Springfield landmark he would be proud of, so I chose his museum. Since Lincoln is a figure to be celebrated, particularly during the year of his Bicentennial, I wanted to create a celebratory mood. The fireworks idea just kind of came to me after that and after all the other pieces fell into place.

This was my first full-color design, so I didn’t know how well it was going to turn out at the beginning. When I got done with it, I knew it was going to be awesome. Because this shirt turned out so well and has been such a great success so far, I plan on keeping the picture used in this design around for next year, but next year’s shirt will mention something other than the Bicentennial, so get yours while they last!

Enjoy the shirts!

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If you’re wondering why I still don’t have my new T-shirts (pictured to the right) up on Lincoln Apparel or on my Etsy store, it’s because I’m having some frustrating delays in printing them. I wanted to have them up by early this week, but the delays will likely force me to wait until early next week to put them up on my sites. Sometimes, things just take longer than expected.

I do have some good news, though. I’m making progress on another one of my designs which should hopefully be available later this month. It features Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address. I’m also working on finding more local shops that will take some of my shirts so that I can continue to sell them locally as well.

Anyways, hopefully I’ll have the new T-shirts up sometime early next week. You can read more about my new Lincoln T-shirts in my August 20th post. You can also find news about my T-shirts by clicking “Lincoln Apparel” under “Categories”.

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And anything else these days which is poorly made and/or designed. (Which most products made in third world countries, not just China, are.) Besides, with our economy in the worst recession of my lifetime, I’d rather support Americans and American-made products with my money rather than sending it out of the country. And of course, who knows whether that cheap third-world import was made in sweatshop conditions that Abraham Lincoln would not approve of. I have nothing against Chinese people (or the people of any other country for that matter), what I don’t like is the exploitation of third world labor by large greedy US corporations, and the inflated profit margins, lost jobs, and reduced product quality that results.

I’m trying to find some safety pins and string to attach tags to my made-in-the-USA Lincoln T-shirts, that basically have my business card on the front and a little story about how and why they were made on the back. I think it gives them a nice, human touch, that goes to show that my shirts were made by a human being who cares about Abraham Lincoln and spends time creating quality artwork instead of by some big, out-of-state company selling cheap, tacky souvenirs.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any safety pins that are NOT made in China! You’d think for an item that cheap, it’d cost more just to ship it from China to the U.S. than it would to make it in the U.S. But nooooo, it has to be made in China! (And no, I’m not shopping at Wal-Mart for these, or any other big box store for that matter. I hate those places with a passion.) I want to only use U.S. suppliers for my T-shirts and anything that goes along with them. I love and admire Abraham Lincoln and so I feel I must adhere to his morals and ideals, so it makes me angry that I can ONLY find “Made in China”.

Cracked Made in China Shoe

All this, and I’m walking around doing my photography project (and of course, dealing with my T-shirts), in shoes that are only about 6 months old. They’re literally falling apart. The tread on the bottom of the shoes is mostly gone. They have HUGE cracks along the bottom, where the sole and the walls of the shoe meet. Guess where they were made? In CHINA, of course! They’re not even worth the $20 I spent on them at Target. Shoes should last longer than 6 months. Next time, I’m going to buy a pair of New Balance shoes made in the USA. I walk a lot, so I need good walking shoes – it’s my primary mode of transportation, since I live near downtown Springfield, and I go there most days.

Busted Made in China zipper

Oh, and I also have a bag I carry around with me sometimes I got at Target too. My sister helped me sew a picture of Lincoln on it (taken from an old, but faithful, Lincoln T-shirt) to personalize it. I’ve gotten lots of comments on it. The picture is fine, but some of the zippers on the bag are broken, and it’s starting to develop a few holes. It’s maybe only about 1-1/2 years old. And of course, it’s made in China (except for the Lincoln picture obviously).

And I don’t need to tell you about the $150 “Circuit City special” home theater in box system that never worked right that my mom got me for Christmas a few years back, do I? It was made in China, too! But it could never play DVDs without skipping on the smallest miniscule scratches, and on CDs, after playing for about 30 minutes, it’d start to sound like the singer (and the music) was underwater. And the center speaker only worked half of the time (it had a loose connection). Total waste of money. It’s since been replaced by a good set of Logitech 5.1 speakers connected to my Audigy 4 sound card and a cable running from my video card to my TV.

This T-shirt, which I designed myself, is over 5 years old.

What really riles me is that some shops want me to sell my Lincoln T-shirts, that I often spend over 50 hours per design creating, and have printed at a high quality local printer, for the same price as the poorly made and designed chintzy third-world junk that probably costs like $1-$2 to make. They act like art is free, and like labor is free, like all the work I do to create them means nothing, and that quality can be had for the same price as the cheap stuff. Well, I’ve been doing Lincoln T-shirts for years (and wearing Lincoln T-shirts even longer) and I can tell you you get what you pay for. The cheap, chintzy, third world country-made shirts are made of the thinnest possible fabric, the printing is the lowest possible quality and looks like it’ll fade/bleed/crack after a few washings, and it looks like the designer only spent maybe 1 hour on it using clipart. Meanwhile, I have Lincoln shirts I’ve made and Lincoln shirts other local artists have created that have lasted me 5 years or more, still going strong, and aside from a little fading, they still look fine. (And of course, the designs are INFINITELY better.)

I’m done with cheap junk. I wouldn’t take it even if it was free. Problem is, companies like Wal-Mart and the other big box stores (and companies like Event Network which runs the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum gift shop) want it to be your only choice. Heck, sometimes IT IS the only choice. They want fatter profit margins, so they buy the cheapest junk possible and resell it at high markups (Event Network marks up stuff about 800%, seriously). Because they control so much of the retail market, the stuff that’s priced somewhat higher, but is much better quality is eliminated from the market, meaning other local retailers couldn’t stock it even if they wanted to. Indeed, part of the reason I like to do Lincoln T-shirts is to provide a quality alternative to the cheap junk for local retailers.

If Lincoln was alive today, I think he’d be incredibly angry at our state of things. He would not approve of sweatshop labor or other exploitation in third world countries, or of anything that doesn’t last. Reading about him, I always get a sense he had an appreciation for things that lasted. He even fixed stuff that busted – one of the stories often told at the Lincoln Home (not every ranger tells this story) is that one of the legs on his desk broke, and somebody told him that he should get a new one. Well, Lincoln essentially said that the desk was still perfectly good otherwise, so he put a new leg on it and said it was as good as new. How much of today’s junk is repairable or serviceable in that manner?

Over 21 years old, and it still works.

The amazing, and sad, thing is how far we’ve come in the last 15 years. Growing up in the 80s, I remember how you could expect things to last. Many of these things I still have today, and they still work, too. A lot was still made in the USA, and if it wasn’t, it was made in Japan, Canada, or Western Europe. “Cheap” was an insult. Ever since the early 1990s, when Wal-Mart and the other big box stores and free trade agreements came, we’ve been shipping jobs overseas trying to “beat the system” by buying stuff at cheaper prices (where the true costs are hidden). Cheap electronics, cheap clothing, cheap housing, cheap loans. Buy now, pay later. Now, that’s catching up to us. And I’m sick of it. I want quality goods at reasonable prices supporting ideals Lincoln would believe in, not cheap. I stumbled on this book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, the other day while googling around. I haven’t read it, but it sounds like it illustrates our problem. Cheap is too expensive – it costs too much in the long run.

I can’t afford cheap.

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I love creating Lincoln art, and one of the ways in which I express my admiration for Lincoln is by creating Abraham Lincoln T-shirts. I love to wear them, and of course, I love to design them. If you haven’t yet, head over to Lincoln Apparel or my Lincoln Apparel Etsy store and have a look at the T-shirts I’ve done. You can also find my shirts at the Lincoln Home gift shop and at the Lincoln Souvenir and Gift Shop outside the Lincoln Tomb on Monument Avenue (if they haven’t sold out yet). My designs are often typified by attention to detail and vibrant colors (although I have done some black and white T-shirts, too, still with that attention to detail, though). Each design also focuses on a specific Lincoln theme, and often sends some sort of message with him.

The new design (pictured), which has already been a big success here in Springfield, features a color Abraham Lincoln standing in front of his awesome Presidential Museum, with colorful fireworks in the background. It’s as if Lincoln came back to Springfield to celebrate his 200th birthday. I made the shirt specifically to celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial. Because so many people like it, I’ll probably keep selling it in the future. Since it’s still 2009, the gold text on these (below the picture) still mentions the Bicentennial, but next year’s will have something else there, so get yours while it lasts.

The T-shirts will be available in red, blue, and black. They will be 100% cotton, made-in-the-USA T-shirts. I don’t think that Lincoln would approve of sweatshop labor any more than he approved of slavery, so I always try to have my T-shirts made responsibly. And of course, they are designed by me and printed right here in Mr. Lincoln’s Home Town. I hope you like the shirt!

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