The strange tale of a boyhood home

When you mix the dynamics of heritage tourism with historical memory, results can be strange. For instance, take the notion of building a replica of Lincoln' Indiana boyhood home inside the Lincoln Library and Museum. Mind you, they have real artifacts to show, but not enough space to show them because of the crowding caused by fake artifacts.

The log cabin - in which Lincoln lived during his formative years after moving from Kentucky and before coming to Illinois in 1830 - is being constructed of logs from a circa-1800s cabin that was erected inside a barn in Virginia, said Patrick Weeks, fabrication manager for BRC Imagination Arts, the California-based exhibit designer for the museum.

Got, that? Here's the good part:

The museum’s cabin actually is larger than the one in which Lincoln lived.

“It’s been scaled up to accommodate the groups (of visitors), but it is the same configuration as the Lincoln cabin...”

We're going to need a museum and expo just to display the absurdities and garish anomalies associated with heritage tourism.