Back to Boston

A work meeting brought us back to Boston where we got to stay in Harvard Square for a few days. I don't know if it was the Harvard vibe rubbing off on Isaac or what, but he decided that he couldn't get enough of math and started tearing through his "Life of Fred, Decimals and Percents, As Serious as it Need to Be" book, completing page after page. Beyond math, revolution, both new and old, was the theme of this trip. The Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing when we got there. As we stepped out of South Station we could see their camp across the street. Over the weekend we witnessed a march down Newbury Street. It was great to have the boys witness first hand a peaceful demonstration like this and we clapped as they marched by chanting.  The boys and I finally visited the U.S.S. Constitution Museum where I was again shocked to find out things about our history that I never learned in school, like the Barbary Wars, I had no idea that we were at war with North Africa in 1801, thus the birth of our Navy and U.S.S. Constitution. After spending hours there, where the boys got to reef a sail, lay in hammocks, and talk with a volunteer who let them use rope to calk between boards and they felt the difference between the ropes used for standing rigging vs. moving lines, we finally took a tour on the U.S.S. Constitution, where Isaac answered the tour guide's question after question correctly, amazing the crowd with "her" knowledge. We didn't have the heart to tell her that Isaac is a boy with long hair. Awkward.

For the second half of the trip we changed hotels and stayed further north where we were only a half an hour from Concord and Lexington, where "the shot heard round the world" occurred. We spent two afternoons along Battle Road. We attended a ranger talk at the North Bridge, the site where the second shots of the American Revolution took place at 9:30 am (the first shots were fired on Lexington Green earlier in the morning around 5:00 am). At Hartwell Tavern we listened to a talk about the Minutemen and watched a real musket fire. We visited the site of Paul Revere's capture and attended the multi-media presentation that everyone kept telling us we needed to see, which was really quite informative and as the boys put it, "really exciting." At the end of our visits, after completing all of the requirements, the boys became Junior Rangers at Minuteman National Historical Park. The following days were punctuated by much revolutionary play and staged explosions.

Click here for photos.