How about you do something different for a change.  Instead of watching yet another movie of people getting drunk or shooting other people up, how about do something historic?  Something you should already know about. It is important because it was a gift from the people that only thirty years later we had one of the bloodiest wars with that this country has ever seen.  I am talking about the gift from England on September 1, 1752 of our famous still Liberty Bell that sits in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on exhibit in an historic park where our founding fathers were plotting a plan to declare our independence from England.

That was 261 years ago. It was a gift from England that was huge engraved with a Biblical passage from Leviticus that said, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” How ironic that the Americans took their suggestion and killed as many British as we could to drive them out of the country. I guess this is one of the reasons why  God does not allow us to see one moment of our future.  We would not believe our destiny most of the time.

The bell is huge at 12 feet around at its widest. It weighs at just over a Ton.  How did they even move this monstrosity around without the help of hydroelectric lifts and heavy machinery we have at our disposal today? The bell was commissioned by the Philadelphia Assembly at the cost of more than 100 pounds equivalent today to about $20 thousand dollars. Even at that price cracks began to appear when it was rung and it had to be repaired twice by craftsmen in Philadelphia.  We should have killed all those British Bastards just for selling us a defective huge bell.  They called that a gift?

If we needed a huge bell that badly we should have commissioned the expert bell makers located in a small town in Northern Italy.  The family owned business there has been making bells seen and heard all over Europe in Town Halls and Churches to a beautiful shine and perfect bell tones making beautiful music.  I wrote a blog post on the family a while ago. Twenty years later, in October 1777, during the British occupation of Philadelphia, the bell was removed from the city and hidden in a church for fear it would be melted down to make cannons.  I think they should have melted the monster and shot its broken parts right back at the British thieves that sold us the cracked mess.

That event lengthened a hairline crack in the bell. It is said that the bell’s call to freedom when struck makes the note of E flat although the last time it was   heard was in 1846 in honor of George Washington’s birthday  That strike lengthened  a hairline crack.  The large split in the bell is actually a repair.  As to the name, Liberty Bell well that comes from the Abolitionists who took the bell as their anti-slavery symbol.  In the 1830’s, the women’s suffrage movement used the bell as their symbol too.  From 1885 to 1905, the bell traveled around the country to exhibition’s and Fairs.  Being a symbol for civil rights and women’s rights still makes the Bell cool since those issues have been important even in our current century.

To mark D-Day in 1944, the mayor of Philadelphia actually sounded the Bell by using a rubber   mallet.  That made an awful thud of a sound.  Any altar boy who ever rang a church bell could tell you that you need a metal ringer in a bell with no cracks to get a decent sound.  Today the Liberty Bell stands as a silent symbol of the promise of America of liberty and justice for all.  We take for granted that here in this country people of different races and faith and political differences live in peace right next door to each other and we respect each other and live in peace.  The rest of the world is not that kind. We are tolerant of each other because this country is made up of immigrants from all over the world. That is our bond, the fact that we are indeed different.

So go make a trip to see this bell sitting safely in its air conditioned new building in an old historic park in Philly.  Sit in that park on a bench and enjoy a steak sandwich you can buy at a corner vendor like a hot dog stand and have a private conversation with the statue of a founding father and say thanks for another day living free and safe here in America where so many people from other countries bring their talents to this country and help make us one of the smartest, most generous and most resourceful people in the world.