Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-05-09 13:11:05 - Graham Ellis
They say that Boadicea rallied her troops with a speech from her horse. Other "they"s say that she couldn't possibly have projected her voice from the top of her horse, out on the Tilbury Marshes, to more than a handful of followers.
So we can forgive Abraham Lincoln, without a megaphone, SHOUTING HIS WHOLE SPEECHES as they are presented at the Lincoln Memorial. There's one speech (of one panel) and another (of three panels) at the Memorial and - a confession - I find the unparagraphed, all capitalized style very hard to follow. I suspect others do too; people were looking around, taking in the scene, yet not dallying long enough to really take it in.
Perhaps this is the more typical scene here, with the speech assigned to being a tourist attraction to have your picture taken in front of.
If you're a better reader than me, you can click on either image for a full size picture in which the words are readable. But, these days, there are many better alternatives. You can read the speech in many places online - [here] for example, and printed copies about so that you can study in the comfort of where you want to study and can best concentrate.
I heard a speech (acceptance of his election to parliament by Duncan Hames, our new MP) in the middle of the night ... UK time and US time ... last Thursday. It was transmitted live, it came via BBC Radio Wiltshire and the Internet and it was so much richer that the message that's conveyed at the Lincoln Memorial; a real feeling of the atmosphere and the person which just the capitalized word struggled to present. But - let's be fair - I've met Duncan on countless occasions and I know him on a personal basis much better than any other politician. In contrast, I never had the honor of meeting Abraham Lincoln.
Modern Communications has done so much for us - made us so effective in what we do. Lisa and I say that we could never have "done" Well House Manor without the net. And we know that Duncan (I say that rather than "Hames" in the new much less formal world) makes great use of the technology to be effective too. So let's encourage him, in a much more complex world, to take things forward for the Chippenham Constituency, for Wiltshire, and for the UK. Let's wish him well. And let's understand that there will be occasions in when he - or any politician - cannot solve everything, nor even push in the differing directions differing people ask him to.
So we can forgive Abraham Lincoln, without a megaphone, SHOUTING HIS WHOLE SPEECHES as they are presented at the Lincoln Memorial. There's one speech (of one panel) and another (of three panels) at the Memorial and - a confession - I find the unparagraphed, all capitalized style very hard to follow. I suspect others do too; people were looking around, taking in the scene, yet not dallying long enough to really take it in. 
Perhaps this is the more typical scene here, with the speech assigned to being a tourist attraction to have your picture taken in front of.