Imagination

Uff-da.

I just sent in my edit of Jefferson, the third and last presidential bio I'm working on. (All three will still need a lot of futzing with, but the heavy revisioning/rewriting is done.)

I don't get the feeling I'd like Jefferson in person, but it's been great to spend time editing a YA book about him, because, as, Joyce Appleby says in her good book Thomas Jefferson:

"Jefferson had in abundance what most people 

are lucky to have in small doses: imagination."

Like, he imagined mammoths.

Early 19th century attempt at a mammoth restoration ^
 via: WikiCommons/Public Domain

He imagined they might still live in North America and asked Lewis and Clark to look for them.
They were already extinct, more's the pity, but L& C saw a lot of other neat stuff.

 William Clark drew this Cock of the Plains, (sage grouse, Centrocercus urophasianus) in his expedition journal on March 2, 1806.