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At the Lincoln Heritage Museum, while Laine may have
been the television celebrity on hand, her little dog Adelle was
undeniably the star of the show.
Laine commented on Adelle saying that while the dog
is cute and entertaining, she is a service dog trained to assist
Laine at the onset of a seizure. She said some people think Laine
just brings the dog for the fun of it, and while Adelle is fun, she
also can sense ahead of time when Laine is about to have a seizure
and issues a warning to her owner.
Laine also commented, saying that sometimes people approach her with
an attitude of “who do you think you are Paris Helton?” She said she
might like to be Paris Hilton, but the fact was that Adelle had a
job to do and she was good at it. She said that sometimes it would
be nice to reply that it is not a good comment to voice to a person
with a disability. But, she said, you can’t know when someone is
having a bad day. They aren’t happy or perhaps they wouldn’t be
mean, so she shrugs it off thinking that for whatever reason that
person was having a bad day.
Laine was brought to the museum by director Ron Keller, who had met
her when she was in Lincoln two years ago for the Workcamp. The
topic of the day was “Character by Design.”
Laine arrived at the Museum as her “Mary Todd Lincoln
Character” and explained that she loves to wear costumes. She said
she has a collection of outfits, some she may never wear, but she
does love them.
Laine said because the topic of the day was Character, she had
brought photos of her being a character with a different meaning.
She talked about the outfits she has and does wear.
Keller had noted that Laine had come to the museum free of charge
and Laine countered that she could never turn down an opportunity to
wear one of her costumes. And that it also spoke to the “power of
Ron Keller.”
Keller said that the conversations on Character talked about how to
build good character because we “assign ourselves and design
ourselves to be individuals of character.”
Keller reviewed Laines’s biography including her law degree and
practices and her work with her daughter Mina on the series Good
Bones, as well as being a business owner.
He said that Laine fit into the character of Abraham Lincoln because
she was a person who was “a positive, energetic, genial, talented
and learned individual who approaches life with integrity and a
constant desire for discovery.” He said that she is who she is in
person and on television, always genuine.
Laine said in her law practices, she had a favorite thing to do and
that is to help those who are taken advantage of by unscrupulous
businesses and tradespeople. She told a story of how she had a
client who had hired a car refurbished and received a quote of
$10,000. However the bill came to more than $30,000 and the client
was too nice to say no to the overcharges and was just paying them.
Laine said that the business had possession of the car, but she had
told her client that they would go and ask to take the car out for a
test drive. She said the ultimate goal then was to have the client
drive home in the car. The trick had been successful, and once the
car was no longer in the business owner's possession, she came clean
that she was an attorney that had a nice little stack of charges
that could be doled out. She told the businessman that she was
providing him with a very inexpensive lesson in law, and it ended at
that.
Laine said a word of advice is to do what can be done
to settle issues out of court. She said that legal fees will
outweigh the win, so it is almost always in the client’s best
interest to settle out of court.
Laine and her daughter are working in the Indianapolis Indiana area,
seeking out derelict homes in struggling neighborhoods, buying them,
redesigning them into desirable homes in the community that they
then sell. The goal is to uplift the various communities in the city
that are run down.
Laine talked about her collection of stuff she
retrieves from those homes and how she reworks them and turns them
into pieces of art for the homes they are renovating. She said
sometimes the art goes with the home when it sells, but sometimes
not.
Laine spoke about her last visit to Lincoln to work
with an all-girl crew in the workcamp for Lincoln projects in 2021.
She said that she stayed in touch with the girls and knows all about
what they are doing now from their social media pages.
Talking about the topic of the day, Laine said that she sees herself
less as someone of character and more of someone who is a character.
She loves fun and gets a kick out of doing the unexpected. She has
taught herself to do a number of trades including creating a deer
skin coat literally from scratch. She said she had learned to clean
and tan the hide, then made her coat. When asked how she had learned
this technique she quipped that you can find about anything on the
internet.
Laine said she had brought a list with her of descriptive words that
make up character. But before going to her list she wanted to hear
from her guests, what did they think builds or creates an image of
someone with great character. The answers from the room matched many
on Laine’s list.
Hard work, honest, being true to your word, being honorable and
compassionate were a few. Bravery was one that Laine commented on,
saying yes, living life requires a certain amount of bravery, not
being afraid to do things or facing the fear and overcoming it in
order to become a better person is a part of building character. She
also said that one should have “selective fear” be brave enough to
try new things, until those are things that you know will cause harm
to yourself and others, such as doing drugs. She said it is good to
have a fear of doing drugs.
Laine said one of her favorite movies was Defending
your Life starting Meryl Streep. She said that the whole point of
the movie is that “our job in this life is to let go of our fear.”
She said there are a lot of things one can be afraid of, but you
need to work through those fears. She said that she personally has a
fear of high places, and she has had to work through it, until
finally she got to the point that she felt she could ride on a
ferris wheel.
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Laine said that discernment was a big part of
character, where you work through a scenario and weighing the pros
and cons to make a decision.
Perseverance is part of building character. She said that it is
different than being stubborn and you have to also realize that
pushing forward has value but sometimes you have to come to the
point of knowing you are pushing forward out of stubbornness. She
talked about a house she and Mina were looking to buy for a flip.
The house had potential, but at every turn the pair encountered
obstacles and difficulties. They continued to push through and kept
trying to get the house until they got to the point that they had to
stop and look at why. Were they doing this out of stubbornness and
was it actually time to let it go and move on?
A book that Laine enjoyed was “A team of rivals,” by Doris Kerns
Goodwin. The book, about Lincoln, caught Laines’s attention because
it demonstrates Lincolns ability to work through issues and come up
with solutions. She said that it came from perseverance, but also
being flexible and knowing when to change course, staying always
true to his core values.
Laine said another thing to consider is how is character developed?
In her summation, she said that most of the time character comes
from diversity. Do you rise above the diversity, or does it take you
down?
She and the group talked about building character in children. Laine
said that she has seen young kids that were really in a bad place in
life, but they have overcome it. Where did that resiliency come
from, most of the time from one caring adult. She said that is all
it takes, one person who will let that child know that they are
being seen. Kids in distress often feel invisible, like no one sees
their hurts or their struggles or cares about their survival, but
one person can make all the difference in that child’s life. A show
of kindness to a child can change that child’s life.
An audience member remarked that kindness is no longer in fashion in
our society. The audience, which was majority female, added to the
comment, talking about being ignored in hardware stores and lumber
yards when they are seeking to make purchases, people being rude for
no apparent reason and much more.
Laine said that she believes in ‘giving grace’ to all people. She
said that being kind, and forgiving is a better way to go through
life, and that there is nothing to be gained from rants. She noted
that we don’t know what another person is going through, but we can
know that if that person is nasty, they are probably not happy
themselves, and whatever is making them unhappy is being reflected
in their attitude toward others.
An audience member asked what some of Mary Todd
Lincoln’s notable qualities were that displayed character.
Keller answered saying that Mary Lincoln believed that all people
were the same. She spoke her mind, saying what she thought out loud
and letting others decide what to do with it. Mrs. Lincoln is often
portrayed as the person with mental issues and emotional issues by
historians, but Keller said she was also intelligent, and had many
meaningful conversations on important political topics with her
husband. And, that he had great respect for her opinion.
Throughout the afternoon, the topic of the Good Bones show came
through from time to time. Laine was asked about her partnership
with daughter Mina in the show. She said that she felt the two
offered two different perspectives that worked well together. She
said she admired her daughter’s ability to walk into a filthy, run
down, house and envision it as a home. She could in a split second
reimagine a floorplan and make it work, while Laine was a little
more reserved and took a little more time to see the vision.
Asked if there was another HGTV home improvement show that inspired
her, she said she didn’t watch a lot of television, but she would
say that one team that she does respect and admire are the Property
Brothers. She said they have a mission of making life better for the
homeowners they work with, and that is the best vision and goal to
have.
Several people in the audience said they had seen all
the Good Bone shows, and some multiple times. They talked about
specific houses and work that had been done.
Laine had mentioned a time or two that she lived in a neighborhood
in the Indianapolis area that was not sophisticated. She was asked
why she chose to live in the area she does. She said that she lived
there because of the people. She said it was one of those areas
where it was mostly blue-collar workers with their families. They
were people who watched out for one another. If someone in the
neighborhood had a need, the neighbors came together to help out.
She said it was the kind of warm, neighborly, community feel that
she wanted in the place where she lived, and she had found it.
She shared a lot of pictures and talked about the day that daughter
Mina had called her “wildly unpleasant.” She said she owned that
characteristic and had made a shirt that said wildly unpleasant on
it and wore it to the set the next day. She added that the phrase
caught on and there were a number of wildly unpleasant shirts out in
the world now.
As the two hours came to a close, Keller said that
though Laine had come to the meeting free of charge, he wanted to
give her a gift to remember the occasion. He explained that outside
the building there is a statue of Lincoln walking and reading,
exemplifying his desire to learn. He presented to Laine, a smaller
replica of the statue as a thank you gift for spending time at the
Lincoln Heritage Museum.
Even though the day officially came to a close at that time, guests
lingered to speak one on one with Laine for several minutes
afterward.
Laine would on Sunday then make an appearance at the afternoon
kick-off event for the 2024 Workcamp for Lincoln. She told the
guests at the museum that she was saddened that she would not be
able to come in 2024 and help, as it had been a rewarding experience
and one that she would very much have liked to repeat.
[Nila Smith]
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