Does anyone else find it unusual that Lincoln’s Birthday, the Super Bowl, and Valentine’s Day all fall within a single three day period? When I was young, we celebrated every holiday possible in public school, since these were teaching opportunities. I always loved them for the art periods and the story telling events. Not that I was deeply invested in the facts of history, but I cared about the personalities and the principles of their lives’ work.

This meant February focused on Lincoln and Washington both. Of the two, I always preferred Lincoln, perhaps because my teacher had our class memorize the Gettysburg Address. I was entranced by the thought Lincoln wrote this speech on the back of an envelope on the train ride out to that fateful battle field. It wasn’t true, but that’s just one of the hallowed myths of history we’ve spun about the giants of the past.

Of course, we always celebrated Valentine’s Day in the classroom with decorated boxes or bags for exchanging cards. The rule in class was to bring a card for everyone and leave no one out. No one meant no one. The cards didn’t have to be fancy, but everyone needed to get a card, handmade or bought. Of course, we always had some parental snack provided. I think we overdosed on sugar back in those days.

When we’re young, we don’t really have a sense of history, so we don’t see the connections from one act to the later consequence of another. It takes time for young people to mature, process, and grasp the connections between past, present, and future in order to navigate their place in time. When someone says the past is meaningless to them, they’ve built their house on a foundation of sand. The first lesson I always taught in art class was “Attitude, Behavior, and Consequences.” The second lesson was “Clean up after yourself and leave the art room good for the next group.” That first lesson was about how individual actions affected their own work and grades. The second was about community responsibility. And some folks thought I was just letting the kiddos have fun with colors, scissors, and glue.

But back to this Trifecta weekend. The very first Super Bowl was January 15, 1967. I’ve slept several decades since then, so I don’t remember if I watched it. Super Bowl XXXVI, was the first one held in February, but all of the prior February games have been held in the first week until this LVI event. That’s 56, for the non Romans among us. This is quite a streak, but all streaks are meant to be broken. This is how we get the great Trifecta of Lincoln, Super Bowl, and Valentine’s all in a row.

Back during the Civil War, supplies were scarce. The supply chain nightmare isn’t a recent issue, for during the war, the South lacked supplies due to the Union embargo for imports and their crops were confiscated by both armies as they marched through the areas near the battlefields. One of the touching homemade valentines of the era was made in 1862 from scrounged paper by the Confederate soldier Robert King for his wife. The basket weave folded card, when opened up, showed two crying lovers, a particularly sad foretelling of his death.

Our class brought scrapbook papers, doilies, craft store items, and leftover crafting materials from past projects. All crafters seem to be packrats, but we also share our largess with others. None of us can say NO to the offer of free stuff. Our materials filled one whole table, so settling on a few items was our first choice. Sometimes we get overwhelmed with too many choices, but our group has learned to go with what strikes their fancy first. Digging through everything to look for a better option often is just a waste of time in a short class. Go with what calls your name. As my daddy would say, “Decide to fish or cut bait, honey. The day’s not getting any longer.”

As Lauralei was working on her Valentine, Jerry came into the room. Immediately she called out, “Don’t look—go away!” He laughed, and took a wide berth around our work tables. If you want to surprise someone, it’s hard if they’re also working at the church. I like the energy of the patterns on her Valentine. Love is never a static thing, even if it is steadfast and forever, but it’s constantly reaching out and pulling us toward one another.

Gail added another dimension to her work by bending the central heart image so it would stand up. This gave it depth and made the heart into a basket from which the butterflies could exit into the open space around it. That took an extra level of thought.

The birds and butterflies on the outer cover of Gail’s card are another variation on the theme.

I can always count on Mike to fill the surface with texture and color. He has no fear whatsoever. Exuberance is his middle name. He claims sarcasm is his love language, but that’s just his outward personality speaking. The inner messages on his card to his lovely wife tell her how wonderful she is and how glad he is to be with her.

I made mine as a landscape, rather than a card. The message, “Live, Laugh, Love” is a variation on a message my grandmother often wrote. I’ve always liked both butterflies and flowers, for they remind me both of the beauty and the transient nature of life. My Valentine is for those of blessed memory, as well as for those I love today, and maybe even for those I’ll love in the days to come.

“Love never fails, But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears…. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

The verse above is an example of historical consciousness in the arena of faith. All religions “take up the past by telling stories and making visible the arches that span over all times and join them together into a unified whole,” just as writers observe the facts of history and draw conclusions about the streams of history and the direction in which they flow. Yet we humans are also capable of forgetting, sometimes because we don’t want to remember and other times because we can’t recall events due to illness, lack of sleep, or inattention. We depend on trusted others to build the narrative for us, so we need to take care from whom we receive our instruction.

On this Super Bowl weekend, much will be made of the heroic efforts of the athletes on the field. There’ll be hype galore, costly commercials, illustrious and notorious folks in attendance for sure, and excessive eating and drinking across America. It may be a different game day than what we’ve been accustomed to, but then as Bob Dylan sings, “The times, they are a-changing.” If the NFL is writing a different narrative, it’s only because they’re finally including voices once suppressed. We can know the facts of history, yet fail to have an historical consciousness, just as we can identify the different styles of art and put them in historical order, but fail to have an aesthetic appreciation of the art itself.

President Lincoln delivered the 272 word Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the occasion of the dedication of the national cemetery for the war dead. Overall, casualties in that three day battle were enormous. At least 25,000 Confederates fell, representing nearly one-third of its army. One-third (12 out of 53) of Robert E. Lee’s generals were killed, wounded, or captured. More than 20,000 Union soldiers fell; General Meade’s subordinate command also suffered heavy losses. Lincoln helped to reframe citizens’ thinking about the cost and nature of this war.

The Super Bowl extravaganza will last nearly four hours and play $500 million in advertisements (about 70 in all),not to mention a preface of more than three hours of entertainment. Compare that to Lincoln’s speech, which lasted three minutes at most:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Joy, love, peace, and Go Bengals!

Cornelia

Super Bowl Winners and Results – Super Bowl History – National Football League – ESPN
http://www.espn.com/nfl/superbowl/history/winners

The Gettysburg Address
https://www.lincolncollection.org/discover/ask-an-expert/qa-archive/did-lincoln-write-the-gettysburg-address-on-the-back-of-an-envelope/

https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/gettysburg/good_cause/transcript.htm

View of Historical Consciousness in Youth. Theoretical and Exemplary Empirical Analyses | Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research
https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/download/904/1974?inline=1