INDEPENDENCE HALL

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Dickie and I made a trip to Philadelphia a couple days ago to visit Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the National Constitution Museum. It's one of those things everybody should do, if they have the opportunity.

Since we live so close to Philadelphia, I made a visit in that area a couple years ago with my brother-in-law, Jim Koehler. We had an enjoyable time stopping in at a replica of Franklin's print shop and taking the tour through the historic buildings. Dickie and I skipped the tour in order to concentrate our attention on the new National Constitution Museum. Here's an outside view of the east corner of the building which displays the opening words of the Constitution on its fascade:

Standing in the museum, we had this view of Independence Hall. The Hall is dwarfed by the modern buildings around it and behind it, but it still holds its own mystique:

We passed by the cemetery where Ben and his wife, Deborah, are buried and I took this picture by poking my camera through the iron fence that provides a view of the grave to passers-by. Notice the coins sprinkled on the slab. It's traditional for visitors to toss their pennies on the grave of the man who reminded everyone that "a penny saved is a penny earned". As you can see, the gravestone is cracked:

An interesting feature of the Constitution Museum is a room in which life-sized statues of the men who devised and established our Constitution are placed around the room so that visitors can mingle with them and actually sign a copy of the Constitution that lies on a table there. Here's a shot I took of Ben seated with other statues around him. Notice the blurred white figure of an actual person on the left:

I caught Dickie standing next to Alexander Hamilton. Notice other visitors in the background. There were a large number of students from Northwest High in Philadelphia who happened to be visiting at the time. Hamilton, by the way, was one of the smaller men (in physical size), although he had a large impact in Revolutionary times:

We took the time to go through the building that now houses the Liberty Bell. Security there is about as tight as at the airports these days, but it's worth the trouble to get a look at the Bell. I took this picture from the back side (so to speak) since the crack is only visible from the other side, but the light is better from the window side:

Here's a look at the crack:

That's it for this week. As I write this, I can hear someone on television in the next room shouting anti-war speech in Washington, D.C. I wonder how our founding fathers would feel about our present-day efforts to plant democracy by force in the Middle East?