I’ve been reading the book Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  It’s a absorbing read, one I would recommend to anyone.  I’ve been soaking it up for months and I’m still but a third of the way through its 750 pages.  I’m at the point in the book where Lincoln has just won the Republican nomination for president.

The news that Lincoln had defeated Seward (his closest rival) came as a shock to much of the country, especially the republican establishment.  On Capital Hill, word of Lincoln’s nomination “was received with general incredulity.”  The House was in such a state of confusion that it was clear no business would be done, so it adjourned.

Exulting in Lincoln’s lack of national experience, Democratic newspapers had a field day ridiculing his biography.  He is “a third rate Western lawyer,” the Herald gloated.  “The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of a small intellect, growing smaller.”  Rejecting Seward and Chase (Lincoln’s republican challengers), “who are statesmen and able men,” the Herald continued, “they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar,” and whose speeches are “illiterate compositions... interlarded with course and clumsy jokes.”  Not content to deride his intellect, hostile publications focused on his appearance,  “Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame.  He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly.”

More violent attacks appeared in the Charleston Mercury, which scornfully asked: “After him what decent white man would be President?” Seward, the paper insisted, had been “thrust aside” because he “lacked the necessary nerve to carry through measures of Southern subjugation.”  Lincoln, on the other hand, was “the beau ideal of a relentless, dogged, freesoil border-ruffian.”  He was “an illiterate partizan,” claimed the influential Richmond Inquirer, “possessed only in his inveterate of slavery and his openly avowed predilections for negro equality.”

Not long after being elected president, but before taking office, and while the southern states were threatening secession, Lincoln was asked by the editor of a Democratic paper in Missouri to make a soothing public statement that would keep Missouri in the Union, Lincoln replied: “I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public.  Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers, like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled, and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding... I am not at liberty to shift my ground - that is out of the question... The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder.”

Do you detect any correlations between the first republican president, President Lincoln and the current republican president?  Maybe you’ve observed the venomous attacks on Trump brought on by the mainstream media and left leaning politicians and citizens?  Some of you may think the political assault on Trump is over the top and the criticism undeserving.  It may well be so, but it doesn’t appear things were any different with Lincoln in his time.  It’s all politics, and it will always be politics.  Painful, torturous, agonizing politics.  

Ian and I met with Jerry Stonebridge on Tuesday afternoon at his office/shop in Freeland, WA.  Jerry is the owner of Stonebridge Environmental and his company does all things septic: Septic system design, installation (tank and drain-field), inspection, maintenance, and consulting services.  Jerry used to be a biology professor at the University of Washington, but he got tired of  the long commute from Whidbey Island and decided to put his knowledge of biology to work by starting his own business.  Jerry has owned Stonebridge Environmental for over forty years.  He’s 75 and wants to retire in five years.

The Washington On-Site Sewage Association (WOSSA) contacted Jerry regarding our desire to become licensed system designers.  WOSSA put in a good word for us and Jerry agreed to sit down and discuss the possibility of he being our mentor in the one to two year long process (one year for me because of my background, two years for Ian).  It didn’t take long to determine we were of the same mind and opinion and he graciously offered to mentor/apprentice both of us.  More importantly, he offered to employ Ian full-time as soon as he could move to the islands.  This is a perfect opportunity for Ian and myself, learning from the foremost authority on Whidbey Island and possibly the state.

To give you an example on how sharp Jerry is, he shared with us a story about a family that he designed and installed a septic system for.  Sometime after it was installed the family called Jerry to say the septic system was no long working properly.  Jerry performed a quick evaluation of the septic tank and new at once what the problem was.  The only difference from the time he installed the system until his evaluation was an older daughter was now living with the family.  Jerry told the family the girl was on drugs and what she was discharging through her body and down the toilet had killed the bacteria that digests the tank’s organic matter.  The parents were very surprised and the girl ended up in treatment.  The septic system was soon operating properly again.