We spent last week in Boston visiting with our son and his wife who moved to Boston from Birmingham last summer. He got the job at a high-tech software company because he was an expert LISP programmer.

I had been to Boston once before, to a Federal Defender's seminar, but this was the first time I was able to visit some of the places we all read about in our American history and literature books.

The most irritating experience was visiting Walden Pond and discovering that, instead of the placid pond described by Thoreau, it was populated by hundreds of swimmers and sunbathers, at least half of whom were screaming children. I have nothing against screaming children (as long as they belong to someone else), but I felt that I had been set up for disappointment. I will never visit Walden Pond again between Memorial and Labor Days, when the pond is open to swimmers.


Swimmers at Walden Pond


Another shot of Walden Pond. Note the swimmers.

The most moving sight was the North Bridge at Concord and the monument to the farmers that first shot at the British soldiers. At the time, they had no way of knowing how things would turn out--that the British would go out of their way to alienate the American colonists and that the French would give critical assistance that turned the tide. Rebellion against the most powerful empire in the world was not a trivial act, and they knew that they were likely to be eventually hanged when the rebellion was put down. At it turned out, it really was the shot heard round the world.


The North Bridge at Concord

Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world,

The foe long since in silence slept,
Alike the Conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone,
That memory may their deed redeem,
When like our sires our sons are gone.

Spirit! who made those freemen dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid time and nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and Thee

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sung at the completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836.

The tune was Old Hundredth, the same tune to which The Doxology is customarily sung in protestant churches.

Concord and Lexington now have boutique downtowns, populated mostly by tourists. We can be thankful that the National Park Service has preserved the most important sites from privatization and the crass commercialization that invariably accompanies it.