Heather's Harmony

The perfect wedding registry for the traveling couple!

I have a very dear friend who is getting married today, on leap day, how awesome is that?

We were college roommates many moons ago and I am thrilled to see her so happy. Unfortunately they live in another state so I can't share their day with them, so I thought sharing it here on Heathers Harmony was as good as I could do for now until they move back to Utah soon.

Ashlee has asked me for a few tips about planning their honeymoon backpacking through Europe and she mentioned a website they were using that is basically a wedding registry for items on your honeymoon, like eurail passes, eiffel tower tickets and a pizza dinner in Italy. I hadn't heard of anything like this and thought it was a brilliant idea to share with you!

I asked Ashlee and her now husband, Caleb to talk about planning their honeymoon and answer a few questions about their travels.

From the beginning of our engagement we agreed that the majority of our wedding budget should go towards an awesome Honeymoon versus a huge wedding reception. Caleb and I have been on many trips together, and since a Honeymoon should be the mother-load of all trips, we knew we had to do it right. So about a year ago I started looking into places like India, Bali, Thailand and Hawaii. Comparing prices and adventure options felt overwhelming, and I started to think that another trip to Disneyworld was going to be the final decision. Then, one day I was faithfully reading my latest issue of "Martha Stewart Wedding" magazine, when the clouds parted and my mind was blown by the latest wedding trend: honeymoon gift registries. This BRILLIANT revelation was perfect for couples like Caleb and I, who already have the traditional registry gift items, but would still like to give their guests a chance to participate in their special day. On thehoneymoon.com you can create a registry tailored to the specific countries and activities you would like to enjoy on your trip. After booking our flights and Eurail passes, all we had to do was finalize where we wanted to go and what we would like to see. It was very easy to manage and spread the word to our friends and family. It's exciting to have the chance to take a trip like this with your sweetheart, but A LOT of planning is needed! Plane tickets, inter-country travel, lodging, travel documents, packing lists and countless itinerary options can easily snowball into a mess. I was rescued by a handful of lifesaving websites: hostelworld.com, skyscanner.com and eurail.com. All of these were very user-friendly and full of useful travel tidbits and great deals. Many high-fives and shady handshakes to the brains behind these websites that helped make our dream vacation a reality! Once we had everything planned and booked, it was time to get excited about everything that was waiting out there for us to see!

Below are some questions we answered about our upcoming adventure across the pond.

Which country are you most excited to see?

Caleb: Italy- I feel more drawn to the people, food, and culture because they personify what I enjoy most in life.

Ashlee: Ireland- the Irish seem to me to be the "Southerners" of Europe; very friendly and hospitable and they have the best accents! I also have ancestors from Ireland.

What 3 landmarks are you most excited about?

Caleb: Old Trafford (Manchester United's stadium), Colosseum and anything else in Italy.

Ashlee: The Eiffel Tower, Sistine Chapel and the Grand Canal in Venice

What type of transportation are you most excited about?

Caleb: The trains, I've never been on a train before.

Ashlee: Either the ferry we are taking to Ireland or riding on a gondola! That has been a life-long dream of mine!

What is (your soon to be spouses) best quality for traveling?

Caleb: She is very oriented and organized

Ashlee: He is very good at going with the flow and calming me down if things don't go as planned.

What 3 things will you definitely not forget to pack?

Caleb: My passport, toothbrush and my iPhone.

Ashlee: I'll be sure to bring my camera, chapstick and sunglasses.

What food are you most excited to try?

Caleb: REAL, authentic Italian food.

Ashlee: Any sort of street food, or yummy French breads

What is one souvenir you would like to bring home?

Caleb: Manchester United jersey

Ashlee: Hard Rock Cafe shirts or little wooden boxes from the places we visit.

Ashlee is one of my favorite girls ever, she has an unfailing sense of humor, never ending generosity and a contagious positive energy. I wish them both endless happiness and hope their wedding day is nothing short of perfect and blissful!

I can't decide if I should get them plane tickets, dinner on the eiffel tower or tickets to tour the Manchester  United Stadium?? To check out their registry go here.

Congratulations you two!

The perfect wedding registry for the traveling couple!

I have a very dear friend who is getting married today, on leap day, how awesome is that?

We were college roommates many moons ago and I am thrilled to see her so happy. Unfortunately they live in another state so I can't share their day with them, so I thought sharing it here on Heathers Harmony was as good as I could do for now until they move back to Utah soon.

Ashlee has asked me for a few tips about planning their honeymoon backpacking through Europe and she mentioned a website they were using that is basically a wedding registry for items on your honeymoon, like eurail passes, eiffel tower tickets and a pizza dinner in Italy. I hadn't heard of anything like this and thought it was a brilliant idea to share with you!

I asked Ashlee and her now husband, Caleb to talk about planning their honeymoon and answer a few questions about their travels.

From the beginning of our engagement we agreed that the majority of our wedding budget should go towards an awesome Honeymoon versus a huge wedding reception. Caleb and I have been on many trips together, and since a Honeymoon should be the mother-load of all trips, we knew we had to do it right. So about a year ago I started looking into places like India, Bali, Thailand and Hawaii. Comparing prices and adventure options felt overwhelming, and I started to think that another trip to Disneyworld was going to be the final decision. Then, one day I was faithfully reading my latest issue of "Martha Stewart Wedding" magazine, when the clouds parted and my mind was blown by the latest wedding trend: honeymoon gift registries. This BRILLIANT revelation was perfect for couples like Caleb and I, who already have the traditional registry gift items, but would still like to give their guests a chance to participate in their special day. On thehoneymoon.com you can create a registry tailored to the specific countries and activities you would like to enjoy on your trip. After booking our flights and Eurail passes, all we had to do was finalize where we wanted to go and what we would like to see. It was very easy to manage and spread the word to our friends and family. It's exciting to have the chance to take a trip like this with your sweetheart, but A LOT of planning is needed! Plane tickets, inter-country travel, lodging, travel documents, packing lists and countless itinerary options can easily snowball into a mess. I was rescued by a handful of lifesaving websites: hostelworld.com, skyscanner.com and eurail.com. All of these were very user-friendly and full of useful travel tidbits and great deals. Many high-fives and shady handshakes to the brains behind these websites that helped make our dream vacation a reality! Once we had everything planned and booked, it was time to get excited about everything that was waiting out there for us to see!

Below are some questions we answered about our upcoming adventure across the pond.

Which country are you most excited to see?

Caleb: Italy- I feel more drawn to the people, food, and culture because they personify what I enjoy most in life.

Ashlee: Ireland- the Irish seem to me to be the "Southerners" of Europe; very friendly and hospitable and they have the best accents! I also have ancestors from Ireland.

What 3 landmarks are you most excited about?

Caleb: Old Trafford (Manchester United's stadium), Colosseum and anything else in Italy.

Ashlee: The Eiffel Tower, Sistine Chapel and the Grand Canal in Venice

What type of transportation are you most excited about?

Caleb: The trains, I've never been on a train before.

Ashlee: Either the ferry we are taking to Ireland or riding on a gondola! That has been a life-long dream of mine!

What is (your soon to be spouses) best quality for traveling?

Caleb: She is very oriented and organized

Ashlee: He is very good at going with the flow and calming me down if things don't go as planned.

What 3 things will you definitely not forget to pack?

Caleb: My passport, toothbrush and my iPhone.

Ashlee: I'll be sure to bring my camera, chapstick and sunglasses.

What food are you most excited to try?

Caleb: REAL, authentic Italian food.

Ashlee: Any sort of street food, or yummy French breads

What is one souvenir you would like to bring home?

Caleb: Manchester United jersey

Ashlee: Hard Rock Cafe shirts or little wooden boxes from the places we visit.

Ashlee is one of my favorite girls ever, she has an unfailing sense of humor, never ending generosity and a contagious positive energy. I wish them both endless happiness and hope their wedding day is nothing short of perfect and blissful!

I can't decide if I should get them plane tickets, dinner on the eiffel tower or tickets to tour the Manchester  United Stadium?? To check out their registry go here.

Congratulations you two!

Guest Post: From Kenya to Zanzibar

From Kenya to Zanzibar – Two Taxis, One Very Long Bus Journey, a Ferry and 24 Hours

I had spent five weeks in the mountains of Central Kenya on a voluntary project building dams and doing a bit of teaching – or ‘saving the world’, as I like to tell people. When our group left the simple yet very welcoming village in which we were staying, we transformed into fully-fledged tourists ready to see and do the prescribed attractions and experiences of Southern Kenya. After failing to see lions in the East Tsavo National Park and experiencing the pain of standing on multiple sea urchins during a doomed midnight skinny dip at the south coast’s heavenly Diani beach, we decided to independently travel down through Tanzania to Zanzibar – an island we’d vaguely heard of.

The first leg of our journey, merely from our campsite to the bus station, didn’t exactly go smoothly. We were picked up by a giant of a taxi driver who referred to himself as Mr Banana. Like many Kenyans, he was larger than life and wasted no time in regaling us with tales of his time in England. One such tale ominously involved him crashing his car and breaking his leg – imagine an airline pilot coming over the PA system to share his past mishaps with a plane full of passengers. Ten minutes into a twenty four hour journey the taxi got a puncture in the middle of a village. Just as we were preparing to go to plan B (not that there was one), a number of villagers came out to help us and formed into a human jack. This wonderfully unselfish gesture just seemed so natural to everyone involved and it felt like a wonderful contrast to the many people who had hounded us Muzungus (white folk) for money or custom in some of the bigger towns. Under Mr Banana’s supervision the tyre was changed and we got on our way and caught the bus in plenty of time.

When the bus did come it nearly caused me an aneurism. As an Englishman I am a football (soccer) fan who has been bought up to hate Manchester United with a passion – so how exactly was our bus decorated? Every inch was covered in the emblems, colours and name of the very team I despise, of course. In the interests of a successful trip, I timidly got on but at the same time banned my friends from collecting any photographic evidence. 

This twelve hour coach journey was not the customary mundane sleepfest but a journey that kept us on our toes and never really let us sleep. We were squeezed in with three people to every two-seater and caged chickens and standing passengers took up the remaining room in the gangways. The road alternated between nice smooth ‘normal’ road and dusty, bumpy tracks that certainly kept us awake. Our fellow passengers were always friendly as they offered us food that they picked up on the way and pointed out things we passed. As we alighted at the border between Kenya and Tanzania, we noticed that my friend’s feet had swollen grotesquely. The helpful border guards kindly gave us some deep heat to try and keep the swelling down. Like most people, I find other people’s pain quite amusing and so her shrieks as she applied the relatively useless but painful deep heat were pretty amusing.

We arrived into late at night Dar-es-Salaam and were quickly surrounded by an army of taxi drivers, eventually getting to a hotel where we could get a few hours of sleep. At 6am I awoke dazed and confused by a Call to Prayer and fell back asleep. The next day, I was the only person who had heard it and so I thought I’d imagined until we noticed the minarets on the way to the port and it reminded to me that that we’d passed from the predominantly Christian interior to the mainly Muslim coastal regions. After breakfast, another hairy taxi journey ensued in a car that felt like it had come out of the Flintstones with a very holey undercarriage that allowed us to observe the tarmac passing right under our feet. It was best to follow the age-old phrase and ‘don’t look down’.

The final part of the journey was an overnight ferry journey to Stone Town in Zanzibar. Even though we had Second Class tickets for the deck of the boat, we were ushered into the First Class lounge and this gave me mixed feelings of appreciation and guilt as we spent the night watching awful Steven Seagal movies on fairly comfortable cinema seats inside whilst many others slept outside under the stars. A couple of hours later, the twenty-four hour journey became well worth it as the outline of the island spectacularly appeared in the dawn sunlight and our time on the island was a very relaxing one indeed.

About the Author – John Guzdek

I’m originally from the bland metropolis of Leeds in the UK but I upped sticks and moved to Prague in March 2011. To get by and save money for travelling, I teach English, do freelance writing and I’ve also started a fledgling blog at www.johnguzdek.com. I’ve not settled down too much as I still keep up the travelling as Prague is a great base to explore Central and Eastern Europe. I’ve been lucky to have travelled a fair bit and my past destinations include East Africa, Australia and much of Europe. You can follow me on Twitter @johnguzdek.

Thank you for your support! 

Guest Post: From Kenya to Zanzibar

From Kenya to Zanzibar – Two Taxis, One Very Long Bus Journey, a Ferry and 24 Hours

I had spent five weeks in the mountains of Central Kenya on a voluntary project building dams and doing a bit of teaching – or ‘saving the world’, as I like to tell people. When our group left the simple yet very welcoming village in which we were staying, we transformed into fully-fledged tourists ready to see and do the prescribed attractions and experiences of Southern Kenya. After failing to see lions in the East Tsavo National Park and experiencing the pain of standing on multiple sea urchins during a doomed midnight skinny dip at the south coast’s heavenly Diani beach, we decided to independently travel down through Tanzania to Zanzibar – an island we’d vaguely heard of.

The first leg of our journey, merely from our campsite to the bus station, didn’t exactly go smoothly. We were picked up by a giant of a taxi driver who referred to himself as Mr Banana. Like many Kenyans, he was larger than life and wasted no time in regaling us with tales of his time in England. One such tale ominously involved him crashing his car and breaking his leg – imagine an airline pilot coming over the PA system to share his past mishaps with a plane full of passengers. Ten minutes into a twenty four hour journey the taxi got a puncture in the middle of a village. Just as we were preparing to go to plan B (not that there was one), a number of villagers came out to help us and formed into a human jack. This wonderfully unselfish gesture just seemed so natural to everyone involved and it felt like a wonderful contrast to the many people who had hounded us Muzungus (white folk) for money or custom in some of the bigger towns. Under Mr Banana’s supervision the tyre was changed and we got on our way and caught the bus in plenty of time.

When the bus did come it nearly caused me an aneurism. As an Englishman I am a football (soccer) fan who has been bought up to hate Manchester United with a passion – so how exactly was our bus decorated? Every inch was covered in the emblems, colours and name of the very team I despise, of course. In the interests of a successful trip, I timidly got on but at the same time banned my friends from collecting any photographic evidence. 

This twelve hour coach journey was not the customary mundane sleepfest but a journey that kept us on our toes and never really let us sleep. We were squeezed in with three people to every two-seater and caged chickens and standing passengers took up the remaining room in the gangways. The road alternated between nice smooth ‘normal’ road and dusty, bumpy tracks that certainly kept us awake. Our fellow passengers were always friendly as they offered us food that they picked up on the way and pointed out things we passed. As we alighted at the border between Kenya and Tanzania, we noticed that my friend’s feet had swollen grotesquely. The helpful border guards kindly gave us some deep heat to try and keep the swelling down. Like most people, I find other people’s pain quite amusing and so her shrieks as she applied the relatively useless but painful deep heat were pretty amusing.

We arrived into late at night Dar-es-Salaam and were quickly surrounded by an army of taxi drivers, eventually getting to a hotel where we could get a few hours of sleep. At 6am I awoke dazed and confused by a Call to Prayer and fell back asleep. The next day, I was the only person who had heard it and so I thought I’d imagined until we noticed the minarets on the way to the port and it reminded to me that that we’d passed from the predominantly Christian interior to the mainly Muslim coastal regions. After breakfast, another hairy taxi journey ensued in a car that felt like it had come out of the Flintstones with a very holey undercarriage that allowed us to observe the tarmac passing right under our feet. It was best to follow the age-old phrase and ‘don’t look down’.

The final part of the journey was an overnight ferry journey to Stone Town in Zanzibar. Even though we had Second Class tickets for the deck of the boat, we were ushered into the First Class lounge and this gave me mixed feelings of appreciation and guilt as we spent the night watching awful Steven Seagal movies on fairly comfortable cinema seats inside whilst many others slept outside under the stars. A couple of hours later, the twenty-four hour journey became well worth it as the outline of the island spectacularly appeared in the dawn sunlight and our time on the island was a very relaxing one indeed.

About the Author – John Guzdek

I’m originally from the bland metropolis of Leeds in the UK but I upped sticks and moved to Prague in March 2011. To get by and save money for travelling, I teach English, do freelance writing and I’ve also started a fledgling blog at www.johnguzdek.com. I’ve not settled down too much as I still keep up the travelling as Prague is a great base to explore Central and Eastern Europe. I’ve been lucky to have travelled a fair bit and my past destinations include East Africa, Australia and much of Europe. You can follow me on Twitter @johnguzdek.

Thank you for your support! 

Guest Post: Traveling through Time with Thomas DiLorenzo

Heathers Harmony accepts guest posts and would love your support & participation!

For more information and details Download Writing a guest post. 

The following is a guest post book review of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  This book was selected by people participating in http://freedombookclub.com as their Book of the Month for December 2011. FURB is managing editor of that website.  

 

(Furb with 2 of his daughters at a local hockey game)

Firstly, thank you Heather, for allowing me to be a contributor to your blog.  To the reader, I want you to know that I have travelled.  Some of the places I have travelled are Quebec and the maritime provinces of Canada, England, Bermuda, and all over the United States.  Due to familial constraints (willingly entered into by me), I now rarely travel physically.  Mentally and spiritually, I am still travelling through the world of ideas, and I want to tell you about a journey I just finished.

 "There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." ~ Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone

On my most recent journey I hired a guide.  His name is Tom.  He lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.  But there is one unusual thing about Tom; he is a time traveler.  This isn't the first time that I have hired Tom to take me on a journey.  On my previous journey with Tom he showed me some pretty amazing things, but nothing had prepared me for this trip into the past.  The last journey was a journey where I experienced many wonderful and happy things.  Tom showed me how capitalism saved America.

This time, Tom has shown me a scene altogether scary and sometimes gruesome.  On this trip Tom has taken me from Illinois circa 1840, to New England at the end of 1814, to South Carolina in April 1861, and to various physical points in time and space in the United States and the deep south.

The main point of this trip was to visit with... to really get to know that mythic figure of history, Abraham Lincoln.  Having been keenly interested in history my whole life, I was eager to learn more about Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator, and preserver of the Union.  What really drove Abraham Lincoln to enter into politics in the first place?  Tom has visited with Father Abraham, his friends, and lots and lots of Lincoln's friends and protégés, and with his detractors, where they could be found, in an attempt to introduce him as a real man. 

 

Tom introduces me to Lincoln as a young trial lawyer first, filled with a frothy political ambition.  Young Abe, infatuated with Henry Clay and his "American System," seemingly had one motive: to become a wealthy merchant, a peddler man, a peddler of political favors and influence through the consolidation of power, implemented through an all powerful central government.  Tom shows us how Father Abraham, as a young state legislator in Illinois became known as Leaping Lincoln for jumping out of the legislative chamber's window to avoid having to cast a vote on a bill.

Tom shows how Lincoln matured into a United States Representative, who openly expressed white supremacist sentiments, pushed legislation to consolidate power in the hands of the few and ladle out pork chop after pork chop to his political patrons.  But the worst was yet to come.

Tom shows how Lincoln used his mastery of doublespeak to perpetrate an inhumane war against the secessionist south while portraying it as a fight against slavery (while freeing no slaves).  Lincoln is shown to be a mostly an inhumane individual who destroyed the United States system of voluntary association between the states, and went on to break international law by tacitly allowing the burning, looting, and raping of the South and it's women, especially the people of African origin.

On this journey, I was awakened to harsh reality of a brutal man, who is raised up in alabaster white in his memorial, but whose garments are stained with the blood of many.  Particularly shocking to me was Father Abraham’s total crackdown on dissent, which included the suppression of free speech, indefinite detention of his detractors (including newspapers and their editors).  Eventually Lincoln's policies lead to the imprisonment and deportation of a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives, which the following passage documents:

"At 2:30 AM on the morning of May 4, 1863, armed Federal soldiers under the command of General Ambrose Burnside knocked down the doors of the Dayton, Ohio, home of Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham and arrested him without a civil warrant; they then threw him into a military prison in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Congressman Vallandigham was subsequently deported by Lincoln to the Southern states, and he then moved to Canada.

Vallandigham's "crime" was making a speech in response to Lincoln's State of the Union Address in which he criticized the president for his unconstitutional usurpation of power.  For this he was declared a "traitor" by Lincoln and imprisoned without trial.  The Democrats in Ohio (a loyal Union state and home to Generals Grant and Sherman) were so outraged that they nominated Vallandigham for the office of governor even though he had been deported.

In his speech Vallandigham expressed his principled devotion to both the Union and the Constitution, which is why he was so critical of Lincoln.  He made the point that Congress alone had the power to borrow money, and yet Lincoln had usurped that power... [by] the suppression of the press, the suspension of habeas corpus, the blockade of Southern ports, and other dictatorial acts."

I recommend Tom as an excellent guide. He is a guide that will bring you back to the time of The Real Lincoln.  When you return, you will better understand today's world and what is happening in it.  He may even inspire you to take another journey by sidestepping the perils of the Age of Lincoln, many of which are eerie parallels in the Age of Peace under Obama.

 

Guest Post: Traveling through Time with Thomas DiLorenzo

Heathers Harmony accepts guest posts and would love your support & participation!

For more information and details Download Writing a guest post. 

The following is a guest post book review of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  This book was selected by people participating in http://freedombookclub.com as their Book of the Month for December 2011. FURB is managing editor of that website.  

 

(Furb with 2 of his daughters at a local hockey game)

Firstly, thank you Heather, for allowing me to be a contributor to your blog.  To the reader, I want you to know that I have travelled.  Some of the places I have travelled are Quebec and the maritime provinces of Canada, England, Bermuda, and all over the United States.  Due to familial constraints (willingly entered into by me), I now rarely travel physically.  Mentally and spiritually, I am still travelling through the world of ideas, and I want to tell you about a journey I just finished.

 "There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." ~ Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone

On my most recent journey I hired a guide.  His name is Tom.  He lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.  But there is one unusual thing about Tom; he is a time traveler.  This isn't the first time that I have hired Tom to take me on a journey.  On my previous journey with Tom he showed me some pretty amazing things, but nothing had prepared me for this trip into the past.  The last journey was a journey where I experienced many wonderful and happy things.  Tom showed me how capitalism saved America.

This time, Tom has shown me a scene altogether scary and sometimes gruesome.  On this trip Tom has taken me from Illinois circa 1840, to New England at the end of 1814, to South Carolina in April 1861, and to various physical points in time and space in the United States and the deep south.

The main point of this trip was to visit with... to really get to know that mythic figure of history, Abraham Lincoln.  Having been keenly interested in history my whole life, I was eager to learn more about Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator, and preserver of the Union.  What really drove Abraham Lincoln to enter into politics in the first place?  Tom has visited with Father Abraham, his friends, and lots and lots of Lincoln's friends and protégés, and with his detractors, where they could be found, in an attempt to introduce him as a real man. 

 

Tom introduces me to Lincoln as a young trial lawyer first, filled with a frothy political ambition.  Young Abe, infatuated with Henry Clay and his "American System," seemingly had one motive: to become a wealthy merchant, a peddler man, a peddler of political favors and influence through the consolidation of power, implemented through an all powerful central government.  Tom shows us how Father Abraham, as a young state legislator in Illinois became known as Leaping Lincoln for jumping out of the legislative chamber's window to avoid having to cast a vote on a bill.

Tom shows how Lincoln matured into a United States Representative, who openly expressed white supremacist sentiments, pushed legislation to consolidate power in the hands of the few and ladle out pork chop after pork chop to his political patrons.  But the worst was yet to come.

Tom shows how Lincoln used his mastery of doublespeak to perpetrate an inhumane war against the secessionist south while portraying it as a fight against slavery (while freeing no slaves).  Lincoln is shown to be a mostly an inhumane individual who destroyed the United States system of voluntary association between the states, and went on to break international law by tacitly allowing the burning, looting, and raping of the South and it's women, especially the people of African origin.

On this journey, I was awakened to harsh reality of a brutal man, who is raised up in alabaster white in his memorial, but whose garments are stained with the blood of many.  Particularly shocking to me was Father Abraham’s total crackdown on dissent, which included the suppression of free speech, indefinite detention of his detractors (including newspapers and their editors).  Eventually Lincoln's policies lead to the imprisonment and deportation of a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives, which the following passage documents:

"At 2:30 AM on the morning of May 4, 1863, armed Federal soldiers under the command of General Ambrose Burnside knocked down the doors of the Dayton, Ohio, home of Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham and arrested him without a civil warrant; they then threw him into a military prison in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Congressman Vallandigham was subsequently deported by Lincoln to the Southern states, and he then moved to Canada.

Vallandigham's "crime" was making a speech in response to Lincoln's State of the Union Address in which he criticized the president for his unconstitutional usurpation of power.  For this he was declared a "traitor" by Lincoln and imprisoned without trial.  The Democrats in Ohio (a loyal Union state and home to Generals Grant and Sherman) were so outraged that they nominated Vallandigham for the office of governor even though he had been deported.

In his speech Vallandigham expressed his principled devotion to both the Union and the Constitution, which is why he was so critical of Lincoln.  He made the point that Congress alone had the power to borrow money, and yet Lincoln had usurped that power... [by] the suppression of the press, the suspension of habeas corpus, the blockade of Southern ports, and other dictatorial acts."

I recommend Tom as an excellent guide. He is a guide that will bring you back to the time of The Real Lincoln.  When you return, you will better understand today's world and what is happening in it.  He may even inspire you to take another journey by sidestepping the perils of the Age of Lincoln, many of which are eerie parallels in the Age of Peace under Obama.