goin' back east!

Over my spring break, as many of you know, I had the opportunity to do a history "field study," which is basically a glorified field trip--just way cooler. My America's Founding Era class (about 21 people... actually, just 21 people for sure.) headed to the east coast to visit all the places we had been talking about in class. It was glorious. I have decided that I absolutely have to split this account up into a few posts, because I simply have far too many things to say. I understand that there are some people who are interested in this post and will want to read the whole thing, while others frankly don't really care. Feel free to skim; I won't be offended. In fact, I even included pictures so you can skip the words altogether.

Our trip started on a Friday night with a bus trip to a nearby airport and a red-eye flight to the East Coast. It was my first official all-nighter, and I handled it pretty well, I think. After trying every conceivable (and inconceivable) physical distortion without finding a comfortable napping position, I spent most of the wee hours before sunrise talking quietly with the classmate next to me. We probably annoyed the people sleeping around us, but they looked really funny trying to sleep in those tiny seats anyway, so it's all okay. I think that our conversation warded off my usual sleep-deprived grumpiness. Either that or God was watching out for my fellow travelers and decided to protect them from the tired Kimberlee. At any rate, we finally arrived in cold, windy Boston and hit the ground running. We saw lots of things. More specifically, we visited Bunker Hill, Paul Revere's home, the Old North Church (where Revere place the lantern signals), and the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"). Cool fact about the USS Constitution: the gun deck of this ship (which is still operable, by the way) has lots of cannons on it. Each cannon, managed by 19 sailors, weighed almost three tons, and shot a 24-pound cannon ball about 1,200 yards. When it shot, the cannon recoiled backwards at 35-40mph, traveling about 9 feet. That is just insane to me. Can you imagine being on that deck in a naval battle? Crazy.


After all our formal sightseeing, we students were handed a subway map and set loose to do whatever we wanted. Since I was so close, I hopped on the subway with a couple other girls and went to Harvard to do some studying. No big deal, you know, just studying at Harvard. But wow, was the architecture beautiful! I have a thing for brick buildings, and I felt like I had died and gone to brick building heaven. Pictures really don't do that place justice (and I only took one picture), so I'll just show you a picture of one residence hall.

Wow. I could handle those dorms. After a few more afternoon adventures, I was finally able, after 47 hours without sleep, to get some rest. It was fabulous.

The next morning, Sunday, we all attended a church service together before visiting Lexington and Concord and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott and Emerson were buried. It was a beautiful cemetery, and, well, those authors are buried there.






Cool stuff. But next--oh that glorious next--we visited Walden Pond. It too, was just amazing. It was probably my imagination, but one could almost feel the creative inspiration seeping from the secluded land and water.



I've been there. It rocked.

The next day we visited the home of John Adams, which didn't technically open to tourists for another month. They opened it just for us, however, and we got a 2-hour private tour of his home and... library. Adams' library was the telos of libraries the world over. That fireproof building of bricks, slate, and granite holds 12,000 volumes in 13 different languages. The room was just books, floor to ceiling, all the way around the room. The shelves, we were told, were even stacked 2-3 books deep. It was intense. Here is one wall:


It has been said that Adams was a very critical reader, and made avid use of his margin space. Sometimes, our guide told us, the impassioned Adams scrawled the word "FOOL" across the pages of his books. Many of the books in this library bear his extensive marginalia.

The library rests in the middle of a beautiful garden full of trees and flowers and roses. In the summer, we were told, the windows can be opened to admit a cool ocean breeze and the scent of flowers. Ah, I could have died there. Or lived there. Either one works. Of course, the house and the stories and the tour were also cool. For example, the bells that summoned the servants--one for each person in the house.


Also, the crazy heavy-looking irons, which were heated by the stove:


Note also the Adams' washing machine (behind the stove pipe):


That concludes the third day of our trip. All the best really is yet to come. I may or may not tell you about it, depending on my level of motivation. Travel posts are just hard work.