America The Babylon

 America The Babylon



Raised on the Bible, I've always liked the stories of Egypt and the Ancient Near East much more than the New Testament with its philosophies and calls to action.  I don't want a parable with everyday examples asking me to do something,

but I know they're right.  I know I need them.  

I want to sit by the flickering light and read of ancient details.  I want to sift through the dust of time and see myself there, not here.  The New Testament is too harsh and too necessary.  It separates the bone from the gristle, not just the sheeps from the goats. 

I want stories I can interpret.

I want stories I can tell. 

Most of all, I want to listen, not stand up and shout. 

The land that is called holy is caught there in the Middle, where continents crashed into one another, but the whole swath, or crescent, up from the Nile through to Mesopotamia has intrigued me since before I can remember.


In fact, I went to Egypt and I've been stuck since.
It was a goal and it was fulfilled, and.... well, now what?

The excavations and the scholarship and the artifacts from Egypt have been a true marvel to me and the art speaks to me so loudly, ever since I first saw images of Pharaoh's daughter and attendants bathing in the Nile.  There's something about bulrushes, papyrus, lotus and black braids that gets me.  Diaphanous gowns, gold and lapis contrasted with carnelian make me anticipate delight. 

The temple of Dendera made my heart sing; despite, or because, of its luxurious paganism.  How privileged I have been to see so many representations, glamorized and authentic, and whitewashed, of Egyptian artistry.  But I think the same would apply if I knew more about Sumer and Akkad and Babylon and Ur and Nineveh.  That's the other end of this wonderful thing.  Egypt is just the Southwestern frontier.  What's to the East?  I don't know nearly enough.

One of my favorite places in the world (as if I know the whole thing, and could even say...) is the British Museum where the Rosetta Stone sits and especially, the Assyrian remains from Nineveh in Room 10.


There must have been nothing to rival the palace in Nineveh, at least on this earth.

Jonah and Nahum speak of Nineveh, in terms of impending judgement delayed and accomplished.  And the luxury and artistry tells me how high they were before they fell.


Today, Dr. J. Vernon McGee at TTB.org spoke about Nahum 3:1-6 and characterized the city, which was the capital of Assyria as "all full of lies."  He's very good at dispelling prophecy theories that don't really apply to today, but yet in his applications, he brings the lesson right back 'round to us, or at least to the United States when he was alive and preaching.  How it manages to be more true today than when he spoke, I'll never know.  It's a good thing we have radio, and the internet.

 When will we have enough?

It's a lie.

It's all lies. 

I'm constantly told that I don't have enough.  My house is full of stuff I don't want and yet I can't get rid of it,

because inside me, but not inside my house, there just isn't enough.

But let's think about this.  McDonald's has more choices on the menu than the greatest feast served by the most sumptuous pasha ever to wear silk curly shoes.  Well, that may be an exaggeration, but it's hard to argue with the fact that an aisle in a grocery store contains more selections than the richest person ever had to choose from in their entire life, for nearly all of human history.  And it's not just history.

I'll say it again, to convince myself.  If you have a safe place to sleep tonight, and a choice of what to eat in your next meal, you are materially rich.  You are rich.  I am rich.  If you have time to read this, or write it, and you're not scrounging for food or a place to stay right now, you are rich.  Yet, America doesn't have an upper class, not really... since everybody seems to think they're in the middle.

Yet we wander through the store, clearly overweight because we've been gorging ourselves, complaining about every aspect of our lives.  The cart is too dirty and the wheel doesn't roll right.  All I want is to buy groceries to stuff in my face and feel good about myself for a minute after I leave the store and return to the couch, but what a tragedy that there is always that one wheel that veers off to the left because there's something caught in its tiny axle.  My life is so rough.  We drink water and drown our metabolisms with it and sit all day, except when leaning on the grocery cart.

I remember Joan Rivers said that we couldn't cross the street without a sip of water.  What are we so thirsty for?  It's not water.  And there's nothing much different on the other side of that street to get to, anyway.
 
We drink and aren't quenched.  We whore and don't multiply.  We gather gold for years with both bloody hands only to pile it up inside a busted up rusty giant sieve with jagged holes in it the size of Volkswagons.

It's all falling out.  It's not yours.  It's going back into the earth from whence it was wrested, one swing of the pick-axe at a time.


The preacher asked Nahum, as he went to study it this time in preparation of his message, "Who are you talking about, us?"  And I feel the same way when I read the prophets.  We are the fat cows on the hills of Bashan, or maybe a single blade of grass one of them may or may not even deign to eat.   






Great civilizations can be studied with ease and in depth, that are now crumbling because God judged them, and they sit now "in the dust and the debris of the ages."  Well, what about us?

We're no pet of God. we're not something special, we think we are as a nation and we can boast of the fact right now we're the strongest nation in the world but you know, that might even be questioned today. 

Isn't everything questioned today?  Is there anything that everybody agrees with?

America is not in prophecy, but haven't I always thought of it as Babylon?  Are we not a well-favored harlot that all the world courts and plays up to?  Everybody wants to be us or U.S. right now, but it won't last.  Fifteen nations would drop the bomb on us today if they thought they could get away with it.  But they sell their souls for a chance to buy our products, consume them, and fill up a landfill.

And I will cast abominable filth upon you. 

I will bring you down, because I am opposed to you and I will expose you to the world for what you are

and for all to see. 

This is "an apt picture of this present day.  I don't think He's changed his method and if He hasn't we're in deep trouble." 

We're going to have our skirt tossed up around our necks one of these days, and then everybody is going to see what's under there.  It's for your spouse, by the way, not for the benefit of everybody who has the Internet.  I guess the seeing what's up the skirt part can't be about us because God didn't have to do it since we pulled the skirt up ourselves to show off what we've got for a $50 payment (as Mona) or a like (as Kim). 

Continuing the idea that Nineveh was full of lies and so are we, Dr. McGee says with resigned certainty:

What better description would you have today in our country right now?  I feel very much like we're given very little fact, but we're given a great deal of propaganda.  And that not only pertains to Washington, and the news media, but it comes from every area.

Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same as any other businessmen.  They tell us what they want so they can sell their product.  And what, behind all the talk, is their product, if not power for themselves and the people they like?


McGee's lament was only "to be free of this thing today, where I'm fed nothing in the world but propaganda and never given the truth.  One thing that's needed today is the truth."

When's the last time you heard somebody say what they meant?



When's the last time I said what I actually meant?

Commentary on J. Vernon McGee's Take of Micah 4:6-13

Micah 4:6-13












Listening to TTB.org, I hear a lament that bothers me very much.  Paul says that idolatry is covetousness, meaning that whatever is priority in your life is in the way of Jesus.

Jesus is seen as "a way to make your marriage work," a way to raise children, or a way to get rich.  We in the Church are thoroughly spiritually bankrupt when we spend our time thinking about the things of this world. 

Do we not really think that there is a world after this one in which our decisions have more lasting effects?  We do try to get numbers, not significance.  We do strive for the things that can be measured.  And in this effort, we disembowel the true meaning of the gospel, and make it entertainment.

Why would anybody sing for millions if they don't want to sing for You, Lord?

On The Bible Bus

Today Mr. McGee at TTB.org let us know that we on The Bible Bus are moving on to the book of Nahum. I can hardly believe how many books we've covered in such a short time. I'm not finished with three-eyed John, but I guess that's the point; needing a daily vitamin of study, not finishing learning.

I believe I started with Jonah and then we did the 3 Johns, and now Nahum has begun. I knew something was in the middle there, but I had to check the list. Micah was in between 1 and 2 John. I'm excited to see Nahum's prophecy about Nineveh in light of Jonah's success. I have believed for years that the next archeological support for the Bible would come from evidence of Nineveh's redemption in Jonah's time before its destruction after Nahum's prophecy. I guess I've given up on finding Pharoah's chariots underneath the Reed or Red Sea. But if anybody is looking for archeology to support the Bible, they'll find it. Is there any book as geographic even today? I think its unparalleled in ancient literature.

Thoughts on Five Hundred Years of Printing - S. H. Steinberg

 Thoughts on the book
Five Hundred Years of Printing by S. H. Steinberg


I'll start with a quote.  Call me Captain Obvious, but I find so little recognition of history that this one speaks to me.


All historical periods are makeshift expedients : people did not go to bed in the Middle Ages and wake up in modern times.


Five Hundred Years of Printing
S. H. Steinberg
Chapter One
The First Century of Printing
1961 p.15
(What's the deal with the spaces before and after the colon?)





Surprise! The absence of a concern for authorship and titles was not a characteristic of ancient texts.  It bugs me when people say that Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible.  Of course Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible.  Who says he did?  Well, the text kind of says it, but nobody, absolutely nobody for millenia cared a hoot about that.  Yes, I would like to know who wrote and who compiled ancient texts, but it didn't bother the ancients.

The lack of noting an author extended right up through the Middle Ages. Apparently the times that I call modern are the only ones we know of to want to know who wrote what. So here's another reason to think that modern times began with Martin Luther.  Until someone was successful in dividing the power of the church, we can't look back and call it modern.

Of course if you follow my blog, you know already that my other candidate for the bringer of modern times is Alexander, who paved the way for Christ's mission.  Most people today would find that ridiculous, so we'll go with Luther as the first modern man.

It's possible before printing, that since not many things were written, authorship was assumed, and it was only in places where texts were assembled from many places that author's names became more necessary to note. But this idea seems too neat and tidy to be true.  Even texts in Alexandria's Library and Museum and up to the Reformation were identified by their first words, rather than having titles. And I think it was assumed that if it was worth printing, it was considered worth reading, without regard to authorship.  People weren't for the most part choosing what to read, but choosing if to read.  Did people really just read without thinking about who wrote?  This is inconceivable to me, but I live after the scientific method and the Renaissance.

There is a nice long quote, with facsimile of Gutenberg's printed page about the wonder of printing and how it is a gift from God that is as a marvel of His grace. I always thought of him more as an artist or craftsman or businessman, but apparently his association with the word Bible is more than a characteristic of the times. He wanted to get the Word out and he did.    p.19

 With the help of the Most High at whose will the tongues of infants become eloquent and who often reveals to the lowly what he hides from the wise, this noble book Catholicon has been printed and accomplished without the help of reed, stylus or pen but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types, in the year of the Lord's incarnation 1460 in the noble city of Mainz of the renowned German nation, which God's grace has deigned to prefer and distinguish above all other nations of the earth with so lofty a genius and liberal gifts.  Therefore all praise and honour be offered to thee, holy Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God in three persons...

The second most popular printed book is Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.   p.141

Maximilian I was the first ruler to make use of printing.   p. 54

The first Koran in Latin contained a preface by Martin Luther.   p. 50

Printing was divided into mainly Roman fonts, called founts, that weren't really Roman; and Gothic or Fraktur fonts that weren't really Gothic. The typography followed the general pattern of the word origins. In languages that were mostly Germanic, the fonts that ended up superseded by the Roman ones lasted awhile, and provided think blackletter reading that must have taken a lot of ink.  But English, a mixture of Germanic and Latin tipped the scales and even Hitler championed the Roman fonts.  p.289    I enjoyed looking at the font example that combined the Roman and Frankish, and I didn't find it ridiculous at all.  p. 289 C. G. Schoppe's Centralschift.   Perhaps Erasmus put the triumph of Roman fonts into the path of inevitability since he could have leaned toward the older Germanic ones but was printed in Roman ones. 


p. 341  Longfellow's Hiawatha is the most popular poem in printing.

p. 337  Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is the most popular work of fiction.

I enjoyed the discussion of the Semitic/Phoenician alphabet becoming Hellenized and then Anglicized, but I feel that the history is one we all should know better.  I also remain perplexed at how many different letters can be used for similar pronunciations across languages.  Why can't a name stay the same when it changes languages and how come a sound's representation be more specific?

p. 363

The peaceful coexistence of print, sound, and vision is to a large extent guaranteed by the psycho-physiological make-up of the human race.  The basic division into visual, auditory, and motorial types means that the primary and strongest impulses are conveyed through the eyes, the ears, and the muscles respectively.  

At the end of the paperback, there's a little penguin and the following sentence:

Some other books published by Penguins are described on the following pages.



The most helpful section of the book is the foreword by Beatrice Warde who tries to compare the age of sound's replication- radio, tv and movies to the age of printing that the book is about.  She makes the case that reading is more helpful to the skeptic because the honesty and unchanging unflinching nature of the printed word is different than the personal appeal of the voice.  She's really on to something here.  When people listen to something, it lasts a certain time, but when they read, the medium supports stopping and meditating, referring back to previous passages, comparing and questioning, and I would add.... skipping things you don't want to read.

Yes, we can come into a television program halfway through and leave early, but the program is designed to take up a certain amount of space in time.  A book can be skimmed in five minutes or studied for a lifetime.

It's easy to go back and see what someone wrote, exactly, and more difficult to go back and hear what they've said before.

Printing is on the side of the people who still have the courage to say 'Stop, I want to think about that', or 'Surely what wasn't what you said before?' or 'What are you getting at?'  It does take courage to say such things, even to the amenable printed page, let alone to the vocal spellbinder : and there is no way whatever of saying such things to the reproduced-voice that comes to us through the loudspeaker.  But the future of any form of democratic government depends on keeping that sort of courage alive.    p. 9

I believe that all this listening is more consequential than government, although whoever is in power can use these tools to their great advantage.  Reading has changed the human mind.  We see things from left to right in this culture.  Before reading, left would not have been seen as happening before right.  Photography has changed the human mind.  Instead of knowing which direction something is, we think in terms of left and right, which is a direct result of the change in perspective that flat images have done to reality's three dimensions.  We don't say that the castle is off about three miles to the East, we say that the Jiffy Mart is to the left at the intersection.

Listening to people speak has made us gullible and surface-oriented.  We no longer study because we want answers on bumper stickers.   Although it is true that you don't understand something unless you can state it simply, how can you state something simply with any integrity if you haven't looked below the surface at the underlying beliefs and assumptions?

Fabulous First Paragraph - Five Hundred Years of Printing - S. H. Steinberg

Fabulous First Paragraph - Five Hundred Years of Printing - S. H. Steinberg


Penguin Books Baltimore, Maryland 1955-1961

Foreword's First Paragraph (and more) by Beatrice Warde

These were the five hundred years of the Printer.  These were the centuries in which there was his way, but no other way, of broadcasting identical messages to a thousand or more people, a thousand or more miles apart.  This was the epoch that we have been calling 'modern times'.

We gave it that name because we have imagined ourselves as standing on this side of the deep cleft-in-history that opened up midway of the fifteenth century: the cleft into which Johann Gutenberg and his followers drove those leaden wedges that are called printing types, and split us clean away from that almost inconceivable world in which there was no such thing as printing.

But what if another cleft proves to have been opening just behind us, in this very century?  It is not easy for our children now to imagine a world in which there were no loudspeakers.  Already the demagogues have almost forgotten how handicapped they were in that day-before-yesterday when there were no softspeakers: no radio-waves to carry a stage-whisper of scorn or passion into ten million susceptible ears at the same instant.  The children, as they grow to maturity, will become increasingly familiar with such phrases as 'the year 2000', 'the Third Millennium'.  The mysterious power that is in round numbers will impel them to look with fresher, more far-sighted eyes upon those thousand years that will have passed in some night before they are sixty.  They will be as convinced as we are that something ended and something else began with Gutenberg's invention.   But I think that they will find other names for the epochs on either side of the cleft.

Whatever they call the one on the farther side, it will no longer be the middle ages.  Whether or not they name these past five centuries the Epoch of Gutenberg, they will at least come to look upon it as another 'middle' section of human history.....

Liv Ullman

        

263 × 368 - blu-ray.com

630 × 269 - gamesradar.com

 I recently saw two movies with Liv Ullman, and her beauty reminded me of Sissy Spacek's.

1200 × 500 - rogerebert.com

415 × 500 - matchcut.artboiled.com     

 Saraband was really touching. 
 

300 × 224 - npr.org

370 × 290 - best-horror-movies.com

It was great to watch Bergman work with the actors in the behind-the-scenes footage.

429 × 286 - 21tattoo.wordpress.com

I like Chipotle and Church

I Like Chipotle and Church

Yesterday I got half Barbacoa and half Chicken, all the sauces, corn and extra sour cream and cheese and lettuce.  It was delicious.  Chipotle is my new favorite, if we think of "new" as about two years.  But let's face it, I'm a kid in that I have lots of "favorites."

I remember once I was at my Grandma's house and I had just gotten back from seeing my other Grandma, who I didn't see very much.  So I was in a very familiar place, that we all called "Grandma's" as if Grandpa wasn't right there... and I was talking about where I had just been.  I understand this now.  And I can see my little chatty self, running at the mouth.  My Mom was there and my Grandma that I saw all the time.  And I was talking about my other Grandma.  I said she was my favorite.  When I said the word favorite, I wasn't meaning what I said.  I was saying that I liked her, very much.  I wasn't comparing anybody to anybody.  My Mom didn't like what I said and my Grandma didn't like what I said, and I couldn't figure out why.  I can see the look of confusion all around, and feel the lull in the chatter.  My Grandma shook her head resignedly and said "Well..." as if that was the truth so we all might as well accept it.

Chipotle is almost as good as Disney for people-watching.  But I won't say which one is best.  And they have the best Coke too, or at least a very good Coke.  I don't understand this, but Coke tastes differently in many different ways even considering just Coke from different soda fountains.  Mr. Quick used to have the best, but they changed the type of ice.  It's still good, but it used to be the time-erasing elixir that brought back Summers of childhood, with sunny days, pony rides, cotton candy and jumping off a swing to land at just the right time, in just the right place, right on your feet while sticking the landing.  McD's and Burger King's was a favorite also- and they tasted the same at both places- smooth and round.  There is even a distinctive flavor to Athena's Coke in Maitland which is reminiscent of honey.  Now this has got to be my imagination, but no less real to my Coke-loving brain than reality- but the baklava behind the glass case influences even the soda fountain.  The Coke there is cured by Mediterranean sunlight and stored in cypress barrels under blue-domed arched white buildings in the sea air.

In line at Chipotle, and at Church, that is FBO, there are represented every nation, tribe and tongue, and it's a prelude of what we'll see in heaven.  I think we'll have more choices in that place than we do in these earthly representations, but we'll see when we get there.

Dream Last Night

I am inside between Glory and Val on my left and Mom on my right.  We're watching something ahead of us, seated.  It occurs to me that I have not paid my Mom back a loan of $500.  Glory points this out without letting my Mom understand what she's referring to and I think that Glory is absolutely right and I'm glad that she brought it up.  My Mom is probably waiting for me to pay, and even if I give it back to her, she'll probably just give me more money or not even take it, but the principle of it; the idea, is probably eating at her so the smartest thing to do is to pay her right away so I make a note to remember to do that. 

We start talking about planting and harvesting.  Glory says that the calendar is four times older than the harvester.  She and Val think that's amusing and chuckle together, but I argue that there is no way that is true and although their tone is light, I don't think any of this is funny, and I'm trying to figure it out from history.  I am thinking of the Mayans and I say "You mean the electric harvester?  One run on gas(oline)?"  They kind of laugh it off but I don't see the logic of that timeline and I'm confused.  Val continues in a conversational tone, not serious like me, and says that she doesn't think whoever planted was thinking about harvest time and I say, "But you have to plant at certain times."  Val disagrees, mildly, wanting to change the subject and keep it light, and scoffs.  I continue speaking seriously and say that you need to plant at certain depths, certain distances from other plants, at certain times and then harvest at certain times because agriculture is a complicated process honed throughout the ages.  She says that our family got out of farming at just the right time, meaning it's a good thing I'm not a farmer as hers was.  I maintain my serious tone, and say that you don't harvest until it's ready, so that means there is a time to plant.....

Then I'm outside, on Grandma's property and I'm mowing.  It's not a lawn as much as a garden of shrubs and plants and grasses so I can really decide which parts to mow.  It's not like I'm leaving uncut places obviously undone but more of using the mower to shape the landscape.  I decide to mow over some little shoots and plants and look across the street to the undeveloped land on the other side of Meadowgreen Trail where we used to play Red Light Green Light.  I notice that it's not all pine trees there as I thought, but mostly pine trees and I think that when it's developed, all the trees will be taken out first before building and I think why not leave some of them and build around them?  Then my attention turns back to the lots I'm mowing and I miss the rubber tree, and think about all the memories of climbing it as a kid, but then I notice that it is there, but smaller, and I think I want to go climb up it exactly where my feet would have been going up the trunk when I was little.  I walk past it back toward the house and pass a little wooden building with a door that has a lock on it and a little piece of wire screening over the lock, presumably so rats can't get it.


Then at some point I dream that I am finished reading "Dear Sugar" and although I loved it, I don't need to keep it, as I'm planning to not keep as many things....



It's amazing how much of my dreams I remember now that I have been deliberately trying to do so.  I have been keeping the laptop ready, next to me while I sleep and take a minute to go through the dream before I open my eyes or sit up.  I remember in tv or movies somewhere I saw people hooked up to a monitor that shows everything they dream. 

New Job?

New Job?

It's amazing to me how one e-mail and one phone conversation can snap me into joy.  This feeling that I can do anything and that the world is opened for me is one that I want to keep.

If I believe in goodness, not to mention heaven, there is no good reason not to be this expectant and hopeful all the time.  The only reason this feeling isn't here always is that it goes away when I don't demand that it stay.

We know that bad things happen.  But isn't there always room for improvement?  It's the acknowledgment that there is a margin of possibility that is making me happy right now- and I feel like I could burst (or bust!)  It's not the existence of possibility that makes me happy.  It's because I see it that I feel it. 

I know that there is always an opportunity, so I am determined to return to this feeling at times when it leaves me.

The Maker of the Universe - Frederick William Pitt (1859-1943)

The Maker Of The Universe

The Maker of the Universe,

As man for man was made a curse;

The claims of laws which He had made,

Unto the uttermost He paid.

His holy fingers made the bough

Which grew the thorns that crowned His brow.

The nails that pierced his hands were mined

In secret places He designed;

He made the forests whence there sprung

The tree on which His body hung.

He died upon a cross of wood,

Yet made the hill on which it stood.

The sky that darkened o’er His head

By Him above the earth was spread;

The sun that hid from Him its face

By His decree was poised in space;

The spear that spilled His precious blood

Was tempered in the fires of God.

The grave in which His form was laid

Was hewn in rock His hands had made;

The throne on which He now appears

Was His from everlasting years;

But a new glory crowns His brow,

And every knee to Him shall bow.

 

 

 http://thinkingonscripture.com/2014/06/06/the-maker-of-the-universe-f-w-pitt/

 

It was really really bothering me during the ten minutes it took me to figure out how to turn the italics off so that I could type without them at the beginning of this post and here, that I couldn't easily turn the italics off, but this isn't Word- but I'm glad to be able to type without them now!

I was listening to today's Sunday Sermon at TTB.org and Dr. J. Vernon McGee read this poem at the end of the sermon.  The text was available to read and to copy (right click on it to see the choices) at TTB.org also.  But I have copied a version in italics, cited above, that uses punctuation more to my liking.

I would change the M in the first use of the word man in line two to a capital, and the H in the word his in line seven to a capital letter, or else not capitalize any of the pronouns.  But capitalization is sticky, isn't it?  Growing up in a world shaped by capitalism, Hallmark and Scofield, I wonder whether or not to capitalize Him and He less often than I wonder if I should type His or Whose when typing of God.  Of course it barely enters my mind not to capitalize Lord.  But what about King or Redeemer or Provider?  It bugs me that I'm not consistent with capitalization in this blog.  It bugs me that I'm not consistent with paragraphs and spacing, and italics and quotes and other things too- like dashes and ellipses and incomplete sentences...

In college, I was generally consistent with more of these typing choices (two spaces in between sentences, semi-colons, colons) when writing an article or a paper, but even then, I was not consistent from one to another.  For the paper, I probably avoided them altogether.  It was, after all, for The Tallahassee Democrat.




The poem, which is in italics for an unknown reason, is lovely.  (I typed loverly, and I think it's probably that, too.)  We could say; that is, us curmudgeonly old-fashioned ones could posit, that the Devil (capital D) has changed English to a newly minted spoken form so simple and so devoid of definitions and meaning that synonyms will do now, rather than definitions- that we can no longer read Shakespeare and the King James'; (oh dear, where do I put that ; ? or ":"?)  the two pillars upon which the English I was taught in school, was constructed.

I can do without Shakespeare, and I don't think the Devil had much to do with that going out of style in its original form.  You can see that it has been interpreted and updated, and few people think of a boy playing the girl parts when they watch a film or play of his today.  Of course the Bible has been updated too, and boy does that bother people. 

The problem is manifold.  Many people hold Shakespeare up there with the Bible, and just might capitalize the H in sentences about him, like I almost did a minute ago.  Many people seem to think that King James is the original and that English should be capitalized while some other languages might should not be.  The shakepearians (see variant spellings in the snippet below) tend to be the other half of the English speakers than the King Jamesers, but they both have it wrong.

We have it wrong.  No surprise, because we're people.

Check out this search online which showed a picture of the actress rather than Shakespeare's wife: