Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!

When went there by an age, since the great flood,

But it was famed with more than with one man?

When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,

That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,

When there is in it but one only man.



Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii



The subject lends itself to bombast, and there's certainly a bit of that in the TNT production Caesar, the new retelling that ran for two hours last night and that concludes with two hours tonight. But there's also some compelling acting in the presentation of the familiar story, and Richard Harris -- in his last performance -- as Sulla is very fine. Christopher Walken takes the role of Cato, and Chris Noth -- looking at times startlingly like Victor Mature -- plays Pompey. Jeremy Sisto has the title role, and is said to be the only actor to play both Caesar and Jesus.



The story of Julius Caesar, the man and his accomplishments, remains a wonder. Ripples from his career eddy past us even now and, to take but one example, it's within living memory that his very name ceased being used as a title of kingly power and authority.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better I began to think of it as rivers. America is a great story, and there is a river on every page of it.----- Charles Kuralt



It's roughly 100 degrees in Philadelphia, and this may not be the ideal, but I made plans to be on the Delaware River this evening. The Spirit of Philadelphia sails at 7:00 for a three-hour cruise. Not on Gerard's scale, of course, but it sounds like fun. The cruise is a joint project of several Big East schools, with Villanova University having the largest contingent on board.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.



George Orwell, in Why I Write, published in Gangrel in 1946. Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in the Bengal province of India on 25 June 1903.



The Brothers Judd also have a fine collection of Orwell links here.

Controversy over the authenticity of the James ossuary continues, despite media reports that suggested otherwise in covering the judgment advanced by a committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks, presents his survey of the current state of the question on the journal's web site:



The day after the Biblical Archaeology Review published an article last October on the extraordinary inscription, "James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus," scratched on a stone bone box from Jerusalem, it appeared on the front page of almost every paper in the world.



On June 18, 2003, a committee appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the inscription to be a forgery. The bone box, or ossuary, was indeed ancient, but the inscription was added in modern times, the committee found.



It may indeed be a forgery and, if so, let's hope the forger will be caught and put in jail.



But I'm still not convinced that it is a forgery.



Jeremy Lott also writes on the subject at American Prowler.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.



Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and of Charles Beecher, was born 24 June 1813.

Today is Juneteenth, anniversary of the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln, and effective 1 January 1863, was finally delivered in Galveston, Texas. Major General Gordon Granger issued the General Order Number 3:



The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.



Celebrations of the day have through the years been closely associated with the Christian church, and here is a traditional prayer from the period of enslavement, beginning Father, I stretch my hand to thee--for no other help I know. Oh my rose of Sharon, my shelter in the time of storm. My prince of peace, my hope in this harsh land...



I'm looking forward to the memorial service this evening at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia, the church that W.E.B. DuBois called by long odds the vastest and most remarkable product of American Negro civilization. The church was founded by Richard Allen, among the most distinguished sons of Philadelphia, and its property at Sixth and Lombard Streets is the oldest parcel of land in the United States continuously owned by African-Americans.



Also on this date, and twenty years later in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor.



Lift Every Voice And Sing



Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.



Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

When the great preacher George Whitefield died in 1770, John Wesley wrote the hymn Servant of God, Well Done as a testimony. The memorial of John Wesley himself is observed with that of his brother Charles on 2 March, but today is the 300th anniversary of the birth of the great evangelical, and we apply the hymn to its author, and ponder the symbol of Cross and flame.



Servant of God, well done!

Thy glorious warfare’s past;

The battle’s fought, the race is won,

And thou art crowned at last.



With saints enthroned on high,

Thou dost thy Lord proclaim,

And still to God salvation cry,

Salvation to the Lamb!



O happy, happy soul!

In ecstasies of praise,

Long as eternal ages roll,

Thou seest Thy Savior’s face.



Redeemed from earth and pain,

Ah! when shall we ascend,

And all in Jesus’ presence reign

Through ages without end?

Christianity is, of course, not the only religion that has found the best explanation of human life in the idea of an incarnate and suffering god. We might, therefore, prefer not to take this tale too seriously - there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of Divine character walking and talking among us - and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, "heard him gladly"; but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that he talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of his friends to hand him over quietly to the police, and we tried him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, "thanking God we were rid of a knave." All this was not very creditable to us, even if he was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about him, it was more discreditable still; for the man we hanged was God Almighty.



So that is the outline of the official story - the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull - this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.



from The Greatest Drama, by Dorothy L. Sayers, who was born on this date, the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, in 1893.

I hadn't planned to post a notice of the events here, but I'm a proud and happy uncle. Graduations this year from Scranton Preparatory School, Little Flower School, and Germantown Friends School. Warm congratulations to Amanda, Clare, and Michael, and every good wish as another stage of the academic journey begins at Catholic University, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, and Vassar College.

For what seemed like a long time I stood leaning near the window, my eyes shut tight against the twilight. Maybe he is right, I thought, maybe all was for nothing, maybe worse than nothing, and all I´ve done was evil in the sight of God. Maybe he is right and God is dead and gone, which is why I can no longer reach him ... I opened my eyes again, looking out into the gloaming light, the woods where wild ducks skimmed southard against a sky as gray as smoke. Yes, I thought, maybe all this is true, otherwise why should God not heed me, why should he not answer?



from The Confessions of Nat Turner. Author William Styron was born on this date in 1925.



Here is a link to Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938.

There's no image of the sculpture in the previous posting that's available to link, but Philadelphia is home to more than 2100 wall murals, works from a celebratory and inspirational program that continues growing, and enriching lives. Here's one called Gateway to West Philadelphia by the artist Max Mason. It's on the side of a building a couple of blocks from Presbyterian Medical Center.

After work last evening, I went to visit a friend, who's recovering well from very serious abdominal surgery. Presbyterian Hospital, founded in 1871 by the Alliance of Philadelphia Presbyteries, is now the Presbyterian Medical Center of the University of Pennnsylvania Health System. It's a remarkably fine facility with a wonderful staff and is situated and landscaped in such a way that it's easy to forget that you're in the heart of West Philadelphia. And there's a detail on the grounds that's stayed in my mind through several visits.



Outside one of the hospital buildings, near a courtyard now alive with marigolds, is a sculpture in stainless steel of a group of four doctors in consultation, detailed even to the stethoscopes, lab coats, and patients' charts. Another doctor, young, purposeful, and still some yards away, hurries to join the discussion. Suggesting collegiality, thoughtfulness and urgency, it's meant to be a realistic portrayal of medical professionals at their work. And it undoubtedly was so when it was commissioned. But time and opportunity have changed the face of the profession, and even though the sculpture remains in the tradition of realism as a mode of representation, it's no longer realistic in its depiction. All of the doctors, you see, are men. And all are Caucasian.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.



The calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church marks today as the feast of Mary and Martha of Bethany. And there's a happiness in the coincidence that it was on this date in 1919 that the United States Congress, by joint resolution, approved the woman's suffrage amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby issued the proclamation of the amendment's adoption on 26 August 1920.



Professor Marjorie Spruill Wheeler of the University of Southern Mississippi is among the country's pre-eminent scholars of The History of the Suffrage Movement.



Vermeer's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

The Young Women's Christian Association, founded in 1858, was prominent in the news a few weeks ago because of the appointment of Patricia Ireland as its new executive director. Mrs. Ireland insisted to the New York Times that "I'm not the head of a Christian organization. I'm the head of a social justice women's organization." In light of her denial, endorsed by others in the national leadership of the group, the suggestion's been made that it would be best that the YWCA remove the Christian reference from its name.



What used to be known as the Young Women’s Christian Association Hymn was written by Frances Ridley Havergal, who died in Wales on this date in 1879.



Truehearted, wholehearted, faithful and loyal,

King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be;

Under the standard exalted and royal,

Strong in Thy strength we will battle for Thee.



Peal out the watchword! Silence it never!

Song of our spirits, rejoicing and free;

Peal out the watchword! Loyal forever!

King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be.



Wholehearted! Savior belovèd and glorious,

Take Thy great power and reign Thou alone,

Over our wills and affections victorious—

Freely surrendered and wholly Thine own.



Truehearted, wholehearted! Fullest allegiance

Yielding henceforth to our glorious King!

Valiant endeavor and loving obedience

Freely and joyously now would we bring.