Ken Burns: "The Choice Could Not Be Clearer"

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

-- Abraham Lincoln, 1838

Forsaking his customary neutrality, renowned filmmaker Ken Burns (finally looking his age at 70) gave the commencement address at Brandeis University last week, a warning and a clarion call:

Transcript is here.

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The Address at Gettysburg

The Address as engraved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

One hundred and fifty years ago today. An excerpt from the Ken Burns masterpiece, The Civil War:

Lincoln's last portrait photograph, February 5, 1865,
colorized by Sanna Dullaway for Time magazine.

Sunday Drive: Ashokan Farewell

This hauntingly beautiful tune is memorable as the theme for Ken Burns's 1990 masterpiece, The Civil War - performed here by Doc and the Lady: