Today is February 12th, Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Bach when I attended Fort Dearborn Grammar School (seen as it is today in the photograph above, along with a black and white photo I took of one of the Kloak kids in the playground back in the 1960s), it represented a day off from school, along with Washington's birthday 10 days later. I was not too crazy about school, and so those two holidays were a big thing to me. A while after I graduated from Fort Dearborn, the travel industry persuaded the President and the Congress to have most of the country's holidays fall on a Monday, creating three day weekends. In the process, both Lincoln's and Washington's birthday were eliminated and President's Day was established on a Monday between these two dates. If I was still in school when this happened, I would have been outraged - one of our precious February holidays had been taken away from us. No three day weekend is worth that. Did the Fort Dearborn student body riot when that happened? I hope so. I would have.
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