Happy Olympics!

Patrick Stewart, one of my favorite actors, carries the Olympic torch through South London on its trek to the Olympic Stadium.  Way to go, Sir Patrick.  Let the games begin! 
....or should I say, "Make it so!"

Patrick Stewart made it so today. This afternoon in Croydon, South London, the Star Trek star carried the Olympic torch for a short distance – through the streets and into the St. Andrew’s School -- as the iconic Olympic symbol grows closer and closer to the Olympic Stadium. The torch has been on a 70-day trek through England (not to mention Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Scotland) on its way to London, host city of the 2012 Summer Olympics. It will, on Friday, be used to light the cauldron during the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games.

Students at the St. Andrew’s School celebrated the torch's arrival with an Olympic-themed sports day, and then were joined for lunch by Stewart and assorted dignitaries. Stewart, speaking to the media after he’d passed the torch, said, “Never mind Jean-Luc Picard, I have attended world premieres of big movies that have not had the excitement and the sense of pleasure and pride that people are exhibiting today. The great thing is it’s the first day of the school holiday, and so all the children are around. It was thrilling. I shall never forget today.”



New Bible Museum Planned for DC

Looks like we will be getting a new museum in town soon. This should be interesting, especially since there have been traveling Bible exhibits at the Library of Congress and the Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian) in past years. I'm also interested since it has connections with my home state of Oklahoma!

Bible Museum Planned for Washington, D.C.

The museum, which will charge admission, is expected to open within the next four years.

Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service [ posted 7/11/2012 ]

A large-scale Bible museum will open in Washington, D.C., within four years, say planners who have been touring the world with portions of their collection.

Cary Summers, chief operating officer of The Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit umbrella group for the collection of the billionaire Green family of Oklahoma, said they considered Washington, Dallas and New York but decided the nation's capital was the best location. The final name of the museum and its exact location have not been disclosed but planners hope to confirm a location later this summer.

Research they commissioned found that the general population was more willing to travel to the nation's capital for a Bible-focused museum than the other two cities, Summers said.

"In reality, the population base within that eight-to-10 hour drive of D.C. represents half the U.S. or two-thirds and there's a lot of Christians in that group," he said Tuesday.

Summers, who has been a consultant on the Creation Museum's planned life-size Noah's Ark in Kentucky, said the Bible museum will charge admission. Although the museums of the Smithsonian Institution are free, he noted that the Newseum and the Spy Museum both charge admission and have been successful.

A sampling of the Bible museum's offerings—from the collection of more than 40,000 artifacts—have been displayed in the Passages Exhibit at the Vatican and in Oklahoma City and Atlanta and will soon appear in Charlotte, N.C.

Summers said the traveling exhibit recreates at 80 percent scale the chamber of London's Westminster Abbey where the King James Version of the Bible was written. A full-scale recreation is planned for the museum.

Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and a Southern Baptist, said the museum will feature the history, contents and influence of the Bible but will leave it up to visitors to decide whether to believe the holy book.

"When we present the evidence, I think it's going to be compelling for somebody to say, `Wow, this is a compelling book. I might want to consider what it has to say,'" he said.

Happy Independence Day!