I know it’s a little bit early yet, but Easter is fast approaching. I have sometimes been asked why I have written my books on totally different subjects. Well, the short answer is my background is in law, therefore the Trial of Jesus Christ became a very real matter of interest to me.
I lived outside of the country for a while which imbued in me a spirit of patriotism. Then when I attended a conference in Philadelphia, in 1976, the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence my interest in the Founding Fathers grew by leaps and bounds. I gave many presentations about my heroes, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and James Madison, to the point where people in my audiences began to ask for me to write a book. So I did.
John Adams doesn’t get the honor and acclaim he deserves! Even in his lifetime he saw this coming. He said:
With our upcoming Presidential Election coming this year, I thought you might be interested in a few fascinating facts about our past presidents.
A few posts back, I quoted a statement by Thomas Carlyle. Perhaps you’ll remember that he was a Scottish philosopher, writer, essayist, historian, and teacher. Here’s another quote from Carlyle that I think you’ll like:
“I cannot live without books, “ Jefferson admitted to John Adams. He sold his vast library of books to Congress to replace the Congressional Library which had burned in the war of 1812.
Yes, I usually find a story about one of the Founders of our Nation to report about in our blog. But today I found a quote that I believe George Washington, because of his “Rules of Civility,” and Benjamin Franklin, because of his “Plan for Moral Perfection,” and even Thomas Jefferson, because of his love of literature, would adopt and accept as worthy of acceptation.
Tom and Martha were married on her father’s plantation in Virginia on New Years Day, 1772. He was 29 and she was a widow at 24. Tom described their marriage as “ten years of uncheckered happiness.” Martha died at the age of 33.
My wife has been asking me what I want to do now that I’m retired. The other night I woke up at about 2 or 2:30 with a thought on my mind. It seemed important to me at that time in my groggy condition. So what did I do? I got out of bed, went into my office, found a scrap of paper and a pencil and wrote down my thought.