Online Documentaries on the White House

Good morning!


In one of my previous posts, I referenced a film on the history of the White House called National Geographic: Inside the White House (click to watch for free online). This is not the film I had been thinking about, though it is an interesting view (watch out for a few bits of mature content). It's more technical and big-picture oriented than the one I had been thinking of.

The White House Revealed, from the Smithsonian Channel, seems to be the one I was remembering. You can also click this title to watch it for free online. This one is more personal - focusing on the stories of the White House as told by the White House staff. You might enjoy them both!

Favorite Historical Fiction Movies

* = some mature content, ** = parents strongly cautioned
(Again... will be under construction for awhile)

 For more lists like this, please see the Our Favorites section on this blog.

Babette's Feast

Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) *

The Book Thief  *

The Boy in Striped Pajamas **

Brideshead Revisited (1981 - Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews) **

Gladiator **

Les Miserables (2012) **

Life is Beautiful *

North and South (BBC - Richard Armitage)

Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth)

The Robe *

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982) *

Favorite Non-Fiction and Based-on-a-true-Story DVDs and Movies

* = some mature content, ** =  parents strongly cautioned
This page is a work in progress.

For more lists like this, please see the Our Favorites section on this blog.

Documentary-ish (and Courses):

Cooking!

Alton Brown's Good Eats!

Geography:

Rick Steves' Europe *

History:

Ken Burns' Baseball *

Ken Burns' Civil War **


Nova: Secrets of Lost Empires Series

Nova: To the Moon

PBS New York *

The Shroud of Turin (Ignatius Press) *

This is America, Charlie Brown

Religion:

Catholicism Series (Fr. Robert Barron)

Chosen Series (Ascension Press)

Footprints of God Series (Ignatius Press)

Science:

Africa: Eye to Eye with the Unknown (BBC)

Building Big with David Macaulay *

Disney's Earth

Earth: The Biography, BBC (Previously Known as The Power of the Planet) Watch section online

Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the Universe

How the Earth Changed History (BBC)

Magic School Bus

Microcosmos

Fully-acted Movies based on True Stories  

(does not include Historical Fiction - which I hope to put together in a separate post):

 

 

Bible History:

The Greatest Story Ever Told *

Jesus of Nazareth *

Joseph, King of Dreams 

One Night with the King *- Queen Esther

Prince of Egypt

The Ten Commandments *

Biography:

42 *


The Blind Side *

Boystown *

Cinderella Man *

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler *

The Diary of Anne Frank *

Edison the Man

Gandhi * 

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story *

The Glenn Miller Story


The Imitation Game **


The Kings' Speech *

A Man for All Seasons (Paul Scofield)


The Miracle Worker (Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke) *

Miss Potter - Beatrix Potter

Molokai * - St. Damien of Molokai

October Baby *


Pope John Paul II (Jon Voight, Cary Elwes) *

The Pride of the Yankees - Lou Gehrig

I Remember Mama

Restless Heart * - St. Augustine

Sergeant York *

The Song of Bernadette - St. Bernadette Soubirous

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days *

The Spirit of St. Louis - Charles Lindbergh

The Stratton Story - Monty Stratton

We Bought a Zoo *

Young Tom Edison

History:

The Agony and the Ecstasy * - Painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Amazing Grace * - The Abolition of Slavery in England

Anna and the King *

Apollo 13 *

Awakenings *

Band of Brothers **

Chariots of Fire

Gettysburg *

Of Gods and Men *

The Great Escape *

Henry V (1989) ** - The Battle of Agincourt (based on the Shakespeare play)


Joyeux Noel ** - The World War I Christmas Truce

Miracle - The U.S. Olympic Hockey Team's Gold Medal Victory over Russia in 1980

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima

The Mission *

The Monuments Men *

October Sky *

The Scarlet and the Black

Spe Salvi and Foyle's War

John and I have been enjoying Foyle's War, a BBC historical detective series set in World War II. We watched the entire first season (consisting of exactly four episodes) over the past 2 or 3 weeks courtesy of Netflix. The reluctant, but able Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle would rather be off at war, but instead is stuck dealing with the muck of crime and hate on the homefront (on the South Coast of England). It's a very character-driven story and I love how Foyle makes his way through grave temptations of bribery and misplaced sympathies to follow his convictions.

The questions aren't always simple. In one episode a murderer who works in an important war department argues rather eloquently that Foyle shouldn't turn him in because he's doing important war work and, after all, it was only a German woman that he murdered. Foyle didn't buy it. In a different episode, the father of a young murder suspect begs to borrow his son temporarily to help him take his fishing boat across the channel to save some of the soldiers from Dunkirk. He promises he will return him to Foyle afterwards. Foyle accepts.

Part of what I appreciate about this series is that it portrays rather honestly the awfulness and complexities of the times in which it's set and yet helps us see that it is possible to choose well, even in such circumstances.

This reminded me of a piece from Pope Benedict's encyclical on hope that we discussed with the teen catechism group last night. It's about freedom and the application of truth that changes to some extent with each generation because they are dealing with ever new and complex issues.

The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they are. Such structures are not only important, but necessary; yet they cannot and must not marginalize human freedom. Even the best structures function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires conviction: conviction does not exist on its own, but must always be gained anew by the community.

Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined - good - state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

What this means is that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed. (from paragraphs 24 and 25, Spe Salvi)

Note: The murders lean a little on the gruesome side at points. I'd be more confident recommending this to older than younger teens.

A Little British History

We're rather quickly reading through H.E. Marshall's Our Island Story, a children's history of England (written in 1905). It's fascinating and a quick read, though the perspective is different and interesting at times (for example, it has the most positive view of Henry II I've ever come across). We especially noticed the contrast in views on King Henry II and St. Thomas a Becket since we read If All the Swords in England earlier this year and watched Becket (not for the younger kids, by the way). Next week we're planning on a dramatic read-aloud of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Should be interesting!

A Touching Coincidence

We had recitals yesterday at our last co-op meeting of the year. We're not generally good at planning far ahead, so I asked my kids what they wanted to do for the recital. Ria immediately offered that she could recite that Civil War letter (somehow I knew what she meant) because she had heard it so many times that she knew it by heart.

We went to co-op and were dumbfounded to hear four violinists practicing in the other room just before recitals. They were practicing the Ashoken Farewell - a song made famous to many because of Ken Burns' Civil War Series (and one which was actually played along with this letter in the series).

Anyway, they pulled off an impromptu combination music and recitation piece (and these violinists are REALLY good!) and there were few dry eyes in the room. I don't have a recording of that, but here's YouTube with the audio bit from the Civil War Series.

Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome

My children (Gus, 12 and Ria, 14) are really enjoying this series from the Teaching Company - I've been keeping one ear on it while doing computer work, but haven't had a chance to sit down and watch very much of it myself yet. We had trouble watching the first few lectures with a larger group as there was too much giggling over facial expressions and such. As a family, we've been loving it - he's engaging, passionate about his material and quite the story teller. There is a little bit of mature content (generally pretty delicately handled), but Gus and Ria skipped over a lecture (for now) that was tagged with a warning that it should previewed for children. I really appreciate (and respect) that the company had the forethought to consider that children might watch it and to give parents a heads-up.

Christians in China

John and I are really excited about the new Ignatius Press title: Christians in China: A.D. 600-2000 by Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, which just arrived in the mail today. My brother-in-law typeset the book (sounds like it was a lot of work!) and highly recommends it. We have a special interest in China because of all of John's business dealings with (and travels to) Taiwan.

I have a feeling that he'll get around to reading it before I do as I have a large stack of books I'm in the middle of.

You Know It's Time to Get a Refund on the History DVD Series You Just Purchased When...

a) your 12 year old son finds a major (and very obvious) historical error in the first ten minutes of the first episode (the teacher mixed up the geographical locations of Upper and Lower Egypt)

b) you both find the teacher's style quite boring (even though he dressed up in costumes and used funny accents which was supposed to make it "fun" and "interesting") and then...

c) when skipping to a different segment to try to get a sense of other parts of the course you stumble across a segment on the Middle Ages that devotes a great deal of its half hour lecture on Life in the Middle Ages describing a hypothetical superstitious activity on the part of a monk.

UPDATE: My mistake. The above part was about the Dark Ages in a section entitled "The Early Christian Church"

d) Finally, while looking over the list to see if there's anything more to the Middle Ages, you happen to notice that an upcoming segment is entitled "The 1300s - the Age of Despair."

Conversions in the Early Church

I'm about a third of the way through Carl Sommer's We Look for a Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians (Ignatius Press) and it is fascinating! I was at first intimidated by its size and "scholarly" look, but it's really quite accessible and written for "every man".

The first segment provides an in-depth overview of the Roman empire at the time of the Early Church in order to understand the world the Early Christians were living in and the challenges and opportunities that arose from it. (This is a book written for adults, by the way. Some mature content arises in this context.)

I've just gotten into the segment on the witness of the Early Christians to those around them. Here are several parts I found particularly interesting and beautiful.

The first is a list of six factors that made Christianity attractive to people at that time:

1) charity offered without expectation of return or profit

2) fellowship offered to all social levels

3) Christian steadfastness in the face of persecution

4) the high moral standards of the Christians

5) Christians' assurance of victory over demons

6) the sacraments, which conveyed the promise of salvation

The second is a quote from St. Justin Martyr (writing about his own conversion):

For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure. For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments...?

You can also see here a strong hint of misconceptions about Christianity that were present even in its earliest days.

And finally, a quote from the text itself:

The early Christians were completely earnest when they converted. They knew what form of death they were courting, and they certainly knew that at the very least they would be subjected to considerable ridicule from their old friends and associates. And yet they continued to present themselves for baptism. Their motives were powerful. When a person made the fateful step of approaching his Christian friend and saying "I want to be like you", he was saying, in effect, "I know my way of life is bankrupt and I cannot continue to live this way anymore. I need Christ, the Church, and the sacraments to become the person I want to be."

Fascinating! This looks to be one of those books that are well-suited for homeschool parents wishing to brush up on their history in order to teach their children. It might be read, at least in part, by more mature teens to great benefit as well.

De Smet!

Ingalls home in de Smet
Originally uploaded by Chez VH

I've always wanted to see the little town on the prairie described in so many of Laura's famous books. We took a day trip there on our first full day in South Dakota (and took a handful of Braga-Henebrys along for the ride).

I'd like to start by saying that I wish I had planned for this a little better ahead of time. We had a great time and it was really neat be "on location", but I know there were other spots I missed as I look over the town literature and such and we didn't allow enough time to visit the Ingalls homestead...

Laura Ingalls Wilder Tour... This was a little pricey for a crowd, but seemed like the heart of what we were visiting de Smet for! :) The tour included the Ingalls home (pictured here), the Surveyor's House and a replica of the Brewster school. You can't take pictures inside, but the buildings were quite interesting, the guides passed lots of historic pictures around for us to look at and it was neat to be able to touch things that had actually belonged to the family (like the big cupboard set that Pa had built for Ma). The stories our guide told were quite interesting (and in many cases added to what we knew from the original books) and she was able to answer the additional questions thrown at her from those on the tour.

More photos here

We also saw the old main street, a big statue of Fr. De Smet (a great missionary worth reading about!), the Loftus Store and the De Smet Depot Museum.

A fun and memorable time was had by all. I was also happy to find postcards of some of the Ingalls photos and sites at the above-mentioned Loftus Store.

Also, as reported by Melissa Wiley, both the Loftus Store and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Society Gift Shop have copies of the unabridged Little House Prequels (get them while you can - reprintings will only be available in an abridged format). Read the details here.

Jesus of Nazareth, chapter 2, "The Temptations of Jesus"

This chapter offers some amazing insights into the three temptations of Jesus in the desert. Instead of trying to overview each of the temptations here (partly because I'm limited on time and partly because I don't want to over-quote), I'm just going to share a few insightful tidbits for your consideration (and hope that you'll consider reading the entire book!)...

The Letter to the Hebrews is particularly eloquent in stressing that Jesus' mission, the solidarity with all of us that he manifested beforehand in his Baptism, includes exposure to the risks and perils of human existence: "Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted" (Heb 2:17-18). "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15)

There are two other great narratives concerning bread in Jesus' life. The first is the multiplication of loaves for the thousands who followed the Lord when he withdrew to a lonely place. Why does Christ now do the very thing he had rejected as a temptation before? The crowds had left everything in order to come hear God's word. They are people who have opened their heart to God and to one another; they are therefore ready to receive the bread with the proper disposition. This miracle of the loaves has three aspects, then. It is preceded by the search for God, for his word, for the teaching that sets the whole of life on the right path. Furthermore, God is asked to supply the bread. Finally, readiness to share with one another is an essential element of the miracle.

Whenever I watch the movie The Miracle Worker (about Helen Keller) - particularly the old one - one scene especially reminds me of how God uses the things of this world (and particularly our needs) to bring us to him. The scene is when Annie Sullivan convinces the parents to let her taken Helen to a little cabin alone for several weeks so that she will have to learn to rely upon Annie and thus become more receptive to her teaching endeavors.

The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars. Remarking on this passage, Joachim Gnilka says that the devil presents himself here as a theologian.

Interesting!

The Christian empire attempted at an early stage to use the faith in order to cement political unity. The Kingdom of Christ was now expected to take the form of a political kingdom and its splendor. The powerlessness of faith, the earthly powerlessness of Jesus Christ, was to be given the helping hand of political and military might. This temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power. The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus' Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria.

The Word in History

The word revealed in history is definitive, but it is inexhaustible, and it unceasingly discloses new depths. In this sense, the Holy Spirit, as the interpreter of Christ, speaks with his word to every age and shows it that this word always has something new to say.

from Salt of the Earth by Cardinal Ratzinger

Uncle Tom's Cabin

I'm reading Uncle Tom's Cabin for our teen lit discussion on Friday. I found this paragraph in the preface particularly interesting:

In the northern states, these representations may, perhaps, be thought caricatures; in the southern states are witnesses who know their fidelity. What personal knowledge the author has had, of the truth of incidents such as here are related, will appear in its time.

It is a comfort to hope, as so many of the world's sorrows and wrongs have, from age to age, been lived down, so a time shall come when sketches similar to these shall be valuable only as memorials of what has long ceased to be.

It's interesting to see the historical perspective the author provides us with by considering the future of the slavery issue. She might not have guessed, though, how long this history would haunt us.

I'm Reading: From Slave to Priest

I'm right in the middle of From Slave to Priest: A Biography of the Reverend Augustine Tolton by Caroline Hemesath right now (published by Ignatius Press). It's a really interesting slice-of-history/biography about the first black priest in the United States. Fr. Tolton was born a slave in 1854.

I had a particularly large chunk of reading time today at the orthodontist as Terri had her braces taken off. More details later.

Saint Agnes (died around 304 AD)

I was just talking to my kids about Saint Agnes yesterday without remembering that today was her feast. When I was little, we didn't have a lot of children's books (not like today at least!) in our home and so the weekly visits to our school library at St. Simon and Jude Elementary School were a real treat for me! I looked forward to that hour and stayed up way too late reading that night. It was in that library, when I was in first grade, that I first fell in love with the saints, through the simple little pictures books published by the Daughters of Saint Paul. I still have the compendium that I purchased when I was about 10 - the older edition of 57 Stories of Saints for Boys and Girls.

Those saints that I first fell in love with were St. Agnes, St. Cecelia (who I took as my confirmation patron years later), St. Sebastian (whose feast was yesterday - the reason why we were discussing the books and the library) and St. Tarcisius.

Anyway, Mike Aquilina has an interesting and informative post about St. Agnes today. Take a peek!

Chesterton's Saint Francis of Assisi

Now that I finished up The Everlasting Man it seems I couldn't wait long to start a new title by the same author. I picked up Saint Francis of Assisi and finding it a nice follow-up to TEM, especially since there's some related thoughts on history. (Also handy since I expect to be reviewing Nancy Brown's study guide for St. Francis in the near future). Here are a "few" highlights from what I read today.

He starts by discussing history in order to set forth his reasons for giving us a picture of the world into which St. Francis of Assisi was born. It's a nice little reminder of mankind's tendency to forget its need for perspective in understanding people of other times and places...

The modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or for that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one definite effect. It has insured that everybody should only hear the end of every story.

Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new Tut-ankhamen, for instance, was entirely new. It is exactly in the same fashion that we read that Admiral Bangs has been shot, which is the first intimation we have that he has ever been born.

Most modern history, especially in England, suffers from the same imperfection as journalism. At best it only tells half of the history of Christendom; and that the second half without the first half. Men for whom reason begins with the Revival of Learning, men for whom religion begins with the Reformation, can never give a complete account of anything, for they have to start with institutions whose origin the cannot explain, or generally even imagine. Just as we hear of the admiral being shot but have never heard of his being born, so we all heard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries, but we heard next to nothing about the creation of the monasteries. Now this sort of history would be hopelessly insufficient, even for an intelligent man who hated the monasteries.

The Crusaders doubtless abused their victory, but there was a victory to abuse. And where there is victory there is valour in the field and popularity in the forum. There is some sort of enthusiasm that encourages excesses or covers faults. For instance, I for one have maintained from very early days the responsibility of the English for their atrocious treatment of the Irish. But it would be quite unfair to the English to describe even the devilry of '98 and leave out altogether mention of the war with Napoleon.

We learn about reforms without knowing what they had to reform, about rebels without a notion of what they rebelled against, of memorials that are not connected with any memory and restorations of things that had apparently never existed before.

...I am not going to discuss here the doctrinal truths of Christianity, but simply the broad historical fact of Christianity, as it might appear to a really enlightened and imaginative person even if he were not a Christian. What I mean at the moment is that the majority of doubts are made out of details. In the course of random reading a man comes across a pagan custom that strikes him as picturesque or a Christian action that strikes him as cruel; but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently to see the main truth about pagan custom or the Christian reaction against it.

He then moves on to explain the significance of the "flowering of culture and the creative arts" in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and what went on during the Dark Ages to allow that to happen.

Now everybody knows, I imagine, that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an awakening of the world. They were a fresh flowering of culture an the creative arts after a long spell of much sterner and even more sterile experience which we call the Dark Ages. They may be called an emancipation; they were certainly an end; an end of what may at least seem a harsher and more inhuman time.

Anybody who supposes that the Dark Ages were plain darkness and nothing else, and that the dawn of the thirteenth century was plain daylight and nothing else, will not be able to make head or tail of the human story of St. Francis of Assisi.

The end of the Dark Ages was not merely the end of a sleep. It was certainly not merely the end of a superstitious enslavement. It was the end of something belonging to a quite definite but quite different order of ideas.

It was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. It marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally worked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from the system. They had been expelled by an era of asceticism, which was the only thing that could have expelled them. Christianity had entered the world to cure the world; and she had cured it in the only way in which it could be cured.

The mistake was too deep to be ideally defined; the short-hand of it is to call it the mistake of nature-worship It might almost as truly be called the mistake of being natural; and it was a very natural mistake.

The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. The greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid this low sort of lunacy.

It was the discovery of that deeper thing, humanly speaking, that constituted the conversion to Christianity. There is a bias in man... and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark. There are many who will smile at the saying but it is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was the news of original sin.

Catholic Crisis and Revival

(cross-posted from the CIN Blog)

I've just finished reading G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. It's a fascinating and thoughtful historical outline considering the impact of Christ and the Church on the world. It's a challenging read, and I found it best to read it slowly in order to better absorb it - I read it over the course of a little more than a year.

One thing I liked about it is that, in a way consistent with C.S. Lewis' thoughts on the importance of reading old books, it allowed me to consider Church History outside the prejudices and emphases of our present day. In other words, reading the thoughts of a faithful Catholic writing in the 1920s about concerns regarding the faith and his perspective on previous problems in Church history provides some insights almost impossible from a writer from my own time period who might share any number of my own assumptions and perspectives about the state of the Church.

I found the chapter "Five Deaths of the Faith" particularly interesting in this regard. Chesterton argues that the Church has suffered a number of staggering "collapses" over the course of History - collapses that might reasonably be viewed as unrecoverable and even be considered as something that died. And yet, after each of these collapses came an incredible revival - a revival almost beyond belief given the seriousness of the collapse. He argues that this is a sign of authenticity of the Church because something fake would have stayed dead.

To have read the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is to know that nearly everybody had come to take it for granted that religion was a thing that would continually broaden like a river, till it reached an infinite sea. Some of them expected it to go down in a cataract of catastrophe, most of them expected it to widen into an estuary of equality and moderation; but all of them thought its returning on itself a prodigy as incredible as witchcraft. In other words, most moderate people thought that faith like freedom would be slowly broadened down; and some advanced people thought that it would be very rapidly broadened down, not to say flattened out. All that world of Guizot and Macaulay and the commercial and scientific liberality was perhaps more certain than any men before or since about the direction in which the world is going. People were so certain about the direction that they only differed about the pace. Many anticipated with alarm, and a few with sympathy, a Jacobin revolt that should guillotine the Archbishop of Canterbury or a Chartist riot that should hang the parsons no the lampposts.But it seemed like a convulsion in nature that the Archbishop instead of losing his head should be looking for his mitre; and that instead of diminishing the respect due to parsons we should strengthen it to the respect due to priests. it revolutionised their very vision of revolution; and turned their very topsyturveydom topsyturvey.

In short, the whole world being divided about whether the stream was going slower or faster, became conscious of something vague but vast that was going against the stream. Both in fat and figure there is something deeply disturbing about this, and that for an essential reason. A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. A dead dog can be lifted on the leaping water with all the swiftness of a leaping hound; but only a live dog can swim backwards. A paper boat can ride the rising deluge with all the airy arrogance of a fairy ship; but if the fairy ship sails upstream it is really rowed by the fairies. And among the things that merely went with the tide of apparent progress and enlargement, there was many a demagogue or sophist whose wild gestures were in truth as lifeless as the movement of a dead dog's limbs wavering in the eddying water; and many a philosophy uncommonly like a paper boat, of the sort that it is not difficult to knock into a cocked hat. But even the truly living and even life-giving things that went with that stream did not thereby prove that they were living or life-giving. It was this other force that was unquestionably and unaccountably alive; the mysterious and unmeasured energy that was thrusting back the river.

The Everlasting Man can be read in its entirety at this link.

Pearl Harbor Survivors Meet for the Last Time

Today is the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

This is avery touching about the survivors last planned memorial gathering (hat-tip Flos Carmeli)

Perspective

A little thought I heard on Relevant Radio from Milwaukee's Archbishop Dolan:

"Church history gives you remarkable serenity."