We’re seeing the beginning of a flood of articles, posts, reports, and television programs about the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The flood is going to continue rising until July 4, but it is, I think, a good thing. We can understand where we came from as a nation. Two examples: Kelt Holt at Just Enough History writes some wonderful articles about the revolution; this week she looks at what were the final steps to independence: Dunmore’s Proclamation, the Olive Branch Petition, and Common Sense.
And in the category of you can’t know too much about those who don’t particularly like you or your beliefs, Bradley Green at Crossway has penned “10 Things You Should Know About Critical Theory,” which is sometimes known as cultural Marxism and explains a lot about the crazy things we see in contemporary life in the West.
I’d read Charles Dickens in high school (David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities), but it was only when I was working as a speechwriter for a CEO that it became serious. He read Dickens, a lot of Dickens, and I was expected to read what he read. And to quote Dickens. So, I did. And I discovered how much I enjoyed his works. I’ve visited the Dickens Museum in London five times and joined the Dickens Fellowship. I read Pickwick Papers back in the 1990s, bit I was reminded of it this week when I saw Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern post and discuss a poem Dickens included in that work – “Ode to an Expiring Frog.”
It was called a miracle, and it may have saved the American Revolution. The British had occupied Boston, and in very short order, cannons were transported in almost impossible conditions from Fort Ticonderoga on the New York-Vermont border to the hills overlooking Boston. The ensuing bombardment forced the British to their ships in Boston Harbor. In nearby Quincy, Abigal Adams watched the bombardment and sent her observations to her husband John. The transfer of the cannons was a hugely successful operation, and it even had some involvement by none other than Benedict Arnold.
As many times as we’ve visited London, I can remember using the iconic red telephone box only once. It was 1983, my wife was recovering from a prescription reaction at our hotel, and I called her at 3 p.m. as the bells of St. Paul’s rang out the hour. More than 40 years later, phone boxes are generally used for one reason – for tourists to take photographs. (There’s one near Parliament Square that always has a long line of people wanted to snap a photo of a phone box with Big Ben and the houses of Parliament in the background.) Spitalfields life posted some pictures of phone boxes this week, and yes, they’re still there.
King Charles III will not issue an Easter message this year, according to Buckingham Palace. He did, however, issue one for Ramadan. A sign of the times? In The Wall Steet Journal, Brit Louise Perry writes that Christendom is no more, and not just in Britain (article unlocked). Canada, for example, has a new hate crime bill which seems to target Christians. Some in Britain have noted that, while the Anglican church seems close to collapse, there is a revival underway. Rhys Laverty at The Critic Magazine says the reports of revival in Britain are not premature, but it’s a phenomenon mostly associated with evangelical and Catholic churches.
We are assaulted with so much news these days that the temptation is to turn it off. All of it. And yet so much if it is accepted narrative masquerading as news. We slip into our respective siloes to make sense of it all. Joe Duke at Front Porch Republic argues that there’s a better way then listening only to echo chambers.
On Easter, Christians around the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder went looking for the best evidence of the resurrection.
When I think about Paul Revere, I think of two things. First, he made a famous ride. And second, he was a silversmith. He was also an engraver, and the Library of Congress Blogs has a post containing several of them.
Tim Challies has a thoughtful post about marriage. When you get married, you marry the whole person. If you see your spouse as a project, thinking in terms of improvement plans, you may have the wrong focus.
My wife and oldest son love the music of Rich Mullins. I will admit to a certain partiality myself. At Mere Orthodoxy, Songwriter and writer Andrew Peterson is interviewed about the singer who died almost 30 years ago.
This past week marked the 250th anniversary of how the occupying British army suddenly evacuated Boston. On March 13, 1776, after having awakened to the shocking site of American cannon overlooking the city, The British started moving 9,000 troops, and a considerable number of Loyalists, to ships in the harbor. Kevin Pawlak at Emerging Revolutionary War Era, and Jonathan Horn at the Free Press, describe what happened.
It’s almost bewildering, and painful, for me to watch some of the craziness going on in Britain right no. Police officers arresting people for tweets. Grandmothers sent to prison for defending their country. A government packing the House of Lords with handpicked supporters. A church that seems in the final stages of disintegration. A prime minister whose answer to dissent and opposition is canceling elections. It’s a classic case of “gradually, then suddenly.” Lou Aguilar at The American Spectator discusses the fall of Britain – and the warning for America.
Forty years ago, I was taking a course called “The Nature of Story,” and one of the books we read was Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. Only 10 years old at the time, it was deservedly already a classic, and it would eventually be made into a movie with Brad Pitt, Tom Skerrit and Brenda Blethyn (who became Vera the detective on PBS Masterpiece Mystery). The novel has just turned 50 years old, and Brandon McNeice at Front Porch Republic has a reflection.
You may not know the name Philo Farnsworth, but he invented what was likely the most influential technology of the 20th century – the television. In 1921, when he was 14 years old, he realized how images might be transmitted through electric current. And the rest, as they say, is history. Jason Clark at This Is the Day has a retrospective.
We’ve visited Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, several times. It’s still rather amazing that this small town in mid-America became the site of one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century. And now there’s a museum dedicated to the man who gave it, sitting below a church bombed during the London Blitz and reconstructed at the college. This week marked the 80th anniversary of the Iron Curtain speech by Winston Churchill. John Rossi at the Imaginative Conservative has the story.
Maybe it’s because we live here, but I think we often forget the impact the American Revolution had on the world. And in many ways, it’s still having an impact. Naturalized American Richard Bell (he’s a native Brit) at American Heritagetakes a look at some of that impact in “They Turned the World Upside Down.”
I learned the song when I was a young child: “Yankee Doodle went to London / just to buy a pony, he stuck a feather in his cap / and called it macaroni.” It’s an old song, likely dating to the start of the American Revolution or colonial period. Historians know how it’s been used over the centuries, but it’s still a mystery as to where it came from.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poetry figures in my novel Brookhaven, wrote the poem that is the most famous about the American Revolution, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” It was one of the stories included in Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, as another conflict ranged in America. We have Longfellow to thank for how we understand Paul Revere’s ride, and it happened slightly differently from how he romanticized it. Well, perhaps more than slightly. But it did happen. Kostya Kennedy at Time Magazine explains why the famous ride did indeed matter.
One of the most common headlines I’ve seen in the last 25 years is “Book publishing faces a crisis.” Book Publishing seems to stay in crisis these days, with the latest being what’s perceived as a dramatic drop-off in sales of non-fiction books. Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review looks at the data and asks, is the non-fiction book crisis for real?
