This Just Makes Me So Upset

Photo: Unbearded Lincoln

Unbearded Lincoln is based upon cast made by Leonard Volk, ca. 1900. Leonard W. Volk was granted a Design patent for this bust on June 12, 1860. The bust was on loan from the National Park Service/Lincoln Home National Historic Site.



I'm cleaning out my email inbox which has become super cluttered with junk mail and this is what I found:

Dear Mr. Prophet,

I saw your August 27, 2005 blog's photograph of the
Leonard Volk bust of Abraham Lincoln. It's a beauty!
I had read the story of Volk making his head cast, but
had never seen the resulting bust.

I am writing (and publishing) a book about Lincoln and
would like to include your photo (converted from color
to gray-scale). I'll give you credit, of course, and
I'll send you a copy of the book, too, which I expect
will be out this calendar year. Want me to include
your URL in the photo credit? It is your photo,
right? :-)

Thank you, and regards,

I've kept the author's name a secret for now.

Just great. I wrote the author back, but I guess he's probably published his book already.

My fifteen minutes passed me by, and I didn't even know it.

In the meantime I'm unsubscribing from like fifteen different newsletters - this has got to stop.

UPDATE: I am just so depressed about this now. I won't say why. O.K. I will say why. The book was published. And it wasn't a small unrecognized Lincoln book. I even read an article about it on CNN, and then at the SJ-R. And then I blogged about it!

Yes, I blogged about a story about a book which my photograph could have been part of without even knowing it.

I'm out of here - time to go open up some beers.

UPDATE FROM SEVERAL DAYS LATER: I didn't actually blog about the upcoming book. I was thinking of another book, or actually it was probably just a paper, or study. AND the photograph above will be included in the soon to be published book. Yea!