Mount Rushmore, S.D. Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I captured this image when I took a much-needed, reflective journey of solitude to Mount Rushmore. This is the only President on the monument who I personally admire and aspire to be like, despite all his flaws, foibles, and failures — or really because of them. Lincoln has always felt all too human and all too real for me. In Senator Charles Sumner’s eulogy and encomium of the assassinated President, he called Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — my favorite speech of all time — a “monumental act.” If a single speech of this great president was a monumental act, then his career of saving the Union was more than a monumental achievement. His career embodied the freeing of a whole people from egregious bondage (a people whose struggles sadly continue today). Moreover, his career was momentous for all humankind and for all of human history, saving the ‘last best hope of Earth,’ a truism that continues to resonate today. Can you imagine if there was no United States in WWII?