Few birds in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.
~ James A. Guineafowl
James A. Garfield; the guineafowl, which apparently tastes like chicken.
It’s been a bit of a haitus for presidential birds lately as I’ve gotten myself distracted by other things, but here we are again, and it’s nice to be back in the habit, though I sort of wish I’d done this one before I took a break to give my wrist time to recover.
I learn something from every bird I draw, and what I learned from this one is NEVER DRAW A DAMN GUINEAFOWL. Oh, it’s terrible, all those wee negative-space white dots everywhere. Nothing but dots and a tiny bald head. Nice bird to look at but next time I’m just taking a photo.
Garfield, for his part, went and got himself shot a few months into his first term and lingered the better part of another three months before finally shuffling off the ol’ coil. I was at his memorial in Cleveland last summer, by whatever odd chance, where I also pointedly touched Eliot Ness’s memorial because I am a scamp.
But! One of Garfield’s big legacy achievements (with some post-mortem followthrough from Chester A. Arthur) was cleaning up the Post Office! Yes, he cleaned house on some serious postal corruption, apparently. Finished the job that Grant sorta kinda started and then Hayes started some more. You don’t clean a post office quickly.