Bookstore to commemorate Lincoln’s famous speech

PALMER — Across the country this month, people have been commemorating the 150th anniversary of one of the most famous speeches ever delivered: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

David Cheezem, owner of Fireside Books in Palmer, is among them.

“As a bookstore, when we see something might run by unnoticed or not noticed enough, we try to fill that gap and I thought the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, which is Tuesday, ought to be commemorated some way, and we wanted to do it a fun way and we started brainstorming and came up with the idea of seeing how many people are willing to dress up and read — or, if they’ve memorized it — recite the Gettysburg Address.”

The speech was given in 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Ceremony in Gettysburg, Penn., just months after the famous battle that had taken place there. It is considered an iconic speech, brilliant in its brevity and dealing with the themes of liberty and equality.

Filmmaker Ken Burns — who chronicled the Civil War in a miniseries for PBS that first aired in 1990 — has embarked on a project to get people to record themselves giving the speech and submit them to learntheaddress.org. The project is a run-up to his movie about the address and a small school in Vermont that encourages students to learn it. The film is set to air in April 2014.

Famous people who have already posted videos there include President Barack Obama, former presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, comedians Louis C.K. and Stephen Colbert, Bill Gates and journalists Gwen Ifill and Wolf Blitzer.

Though they might not be as famous, Cheezem said the recitations and readings of the address at his store will be scored by a local history teacher with the winner going home with a gift certificate.

“It’s just a wonderful speech to hear out loud and I look forward to hearing it over and over,” Cheezem said. “I really believe that I’m going to enjoy it every time, it’s not going to get old.”

Cheezem said the speech embodies a kind of skillful, literate oratory that is to be admired and emulated.

“Maybe it’s long by Twitter standards and sound bites,” he said. “It was a master of brevity and grace and a powerful statement.”

He said that he tries to use his store as a place to celebrate these kinds of achievements. He’s had events surrounding the works of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, as well as one commemorating the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsburg’s famous poem “Howl.”

In addition to the speech contest, the store is staging a costume contest with prizes for the best Mary Todd Lincoln and the best Abraham Lincoln.

“It should be a lot of fun and it’s OK to be a little silly, but we are still I think honoring the moment that way,” Cheezem said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.

What: Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

Where: Fireside Books on Alaska Street in Palmer.

When: Saturday. Sign-ups to recite the speech run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The speeches begin at 5 p.m.

The Gettysburg Address isn’t that long. It’s actually less than 300 words. Here is the complete text of it as written on the Lincoln Memorial:

Four score 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 can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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 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.