...Paul Revere was on the other side of the Charles River from me, galloping like heck toward Lexington to warn Hancock and Adams that 700 British Regulars were turning out to, among other things, arrest them.
They got away in a carriage.
And today, my beautiful girl sang an American songs repertoire there at the Old North Church with the rest of the Bach Children's Chorus.
The performance was beautiful, although it followed a miserable little presentation about the church by a college girl who looked as if the group of us was an interruption to the rest of her day, who gave her schpiel with both boredom and resentment in her eyes, and who DIDN'T EVEN MENTION that today was the anniversary of The Day. It was so awful that I'm going to write a letter.
But I digress.
The kids also sang at the Massachusetts State House this morning. That was fantastic, the acoustics were beautiful, and they also gave us a wonderful tour. The kids were in tip-top form today, aside from the fact that at both concerts someone fainted...the first one, at the Massachusetts State House, was a bona fide fainting, the poor girl in the second row toppled right down off the steps in the middle of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
This was fortunate for me only, in that I was sitting in the front, and I SHOULD have remembered to sit in the back because The Battle Hymn of the Republic never fails to set me weeping. This version is worse, in a way, because they separate the boys off to the side, and they sing one verse themselves, "I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps..." I always hear their not-yet-changed voices and think of all of the young men lost to the Civil War before they had a chance to be men, and I lose it. Well, the young lady in question fainted just as the boys had started their verse, and she saved me the embarrassment of weeping right in front of everyone where all the kids could see. After they ascertained that the girl was okay and was being seen to by a doctor, they started the song again and this time I was distracted enough that I didn't start crying.
This started out about Madison and ended up about me. Ah, well.
We went to the Boston Museum of Science for an afternoon of pure fun. The Museum of Science is FANTASTIC, we didn't even get to do half of it in three hours. I would go back in a heartbeat, it beats the pants off the New England Aquarium, which the girls and I did yesterday morning. They have a whole big great room called Mathematica, which is all about you guessed it. Marvelous.
An hour ago, I gave my exhausted kids the option of hearing The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere tonight or going right to sleep. They chose sleep. I chose blog.
Off to a Boston Duck Tour with the rest of the BCC in the morning, and then Minuteman National Historic Park tomorrow, just the three of us, in the afternoon. It's The Big Day, April 19, so there should be a lot of Minutemen running around doing re-enactments. The park stretches between Lexington and Concord.
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