Okay, here goes:


I’m torn on The Wordy Shipmates. I’m still a relative newbie to Sarah Vowell. With Assassination Vacation, I had that new love vibe going on. All that gushy ‘You’re so awesome, I’m so glad that I found you, where have you been all my life’ feeling. With The Partly Cloudy Patriot, I moved to that next step in a relationship, where you start to learn about the person and some of it reminds you why you fell in love and then sometimes it’s all like ‘My God, you can stop talking now. I know enough about your weird ass family, thankyouverymuch.’ But the love is still there.

So, this is my third venture---I realize I’m missing out on the early years—I’ll get around to it, promise. Initially, I was pleased as punch (??) I thought ‘WHOO!! NEW ENGLAND!! WHOO!!’ because, if you know anything about me, you know that I am a self-proclaimed New England elitist. I’ve lived my entire life here, save a few years in my early 20s when I thought to venture a wee bit south. I have learned that I cannot function outside of it. (Bear with my N.E. rant for a moment) I find that when I leave New England that people are so SLOW. They walk slow, talk slow, and are TOO laid back.. c’mon people! Where’s the urgency?!? We’re movers! We’re founders! WE ROCK. We’ve given the world Stephen King, Harvard, Larry Bird and that guy from the Patriots. Ben & Jerry’s and Robert Frost. Think about Aerosmith and Boston Crème Pie, think johnny cakes, the Farrelly Brothers, Arthur Miller, and Noah-freaking-Webster.

Yeah, we’re pretty awesome.

So, anyway… I was super excited to discover that Sarah’s (yes, she is Sarah to me, what of it?) new book was based on the Puritans settling down in what will be New England in the 1630’s. I spent my formative years in Boston… I followed that red line up and down Tremont and walked the cobblestoned streets of Beacon Hill. I got a really bad perm in Charleston and saw my first Rocky Horror show in Harvard Square. This was home.

Yeah, so, it starts off with this great part about John Cotton’s speech to the Puritans about to set sail to Boston. It’s all ‘Rah! Rah! Yay God! Go forth and spread the Word!’—it’s pure Vowell from page one:

’By the time Cotton says amen, he has fought Mexico for Texas, bought Alaska from the Russians, and dropped napalm on Vietnam. Then he lays a wreath on Custer’s grave and revs past Wounded Knee. Then he claps when the Marquis de Lafayette tells Congress that ‘someday America will save the world.” Then he smiles when Abraham Lincoln calls the United States “the last best hope of earth.” Then he frees Cuba, which would be news to Cuba. Then he signs the lease on Guantanamo Bay.’

Then there’s the City on a Hill speech of John Winthop’s, which further solidifies how awesome we New Englanders are. And the whole Reagan comparison (vintage Vowell) which Shelly does a great job going into in her review. I’m practically weeping because I’m so happy.

Then…well…umm… I got bored. (sorta like you guys are, if you’re still reading this, right?)

I’m sorry, there’s only so much Puritanical Speak I can handle before I start to fade. Maybe I get sidetracked when she mentions the Brady Bunch Thanksgiving episode and decide to watch TVLand for a bit… Maybe I nap… who knows?

It takes a month before I can get through this and I’m about to give up, admit my lack of retaining anything that isn’t shiny or produced by Norman Lear (who’s from CT…awesome.) When she starts in on Anne Hutchinson; then I’m back in the game.

Her passages re: Anne and Mary Dyer are wonderful. And I’m not just oohing and ahhing because ‘Yo! Women Rule!’ or anything (okay, maybe just a little…) I think that Sarah does a great job with her interpretation of Anne’s trial. And the banter between Winthrop and Hutchinson.

(Genealogy buffs might enjoy learning that this lopsided battle of the wits will be repeated between Winthrop and Hutchinson’s descendents during the presidential debates of 2004. Winthrop’s heir, John Kerry, debates Hutchinson’s great-something grandson, George W. Bush. Only in this instance it’s the Hutchinson who is flummoxed by his opponent’s sensical answers. Bush’s constant blinking appears on television as if he thinks the answers to the questions he’s being asked are tattooed inside his eyelids.)

I’m definitely pleased that I stuck it out. Especially when I get to the last 4 pages when she talks about Kennedy and brings it all back to Winthrop’s City on the Hill speech:

’Then [Kennedy:] boils down the two phrases from “A Model of Christian Charity” that mean the most to him: ‘We must always consider, [Winthrop:] said, that we shall be as a city upon a hill. That eyes of all people are upon us.’ I fall for those words every time I hear them, even though they’re dangerous, even though they’re arrogant, even though they’re rude.’

Because, yeah, we New Englanders are proud (and sometimes rude.) And even if we sprout from crazed religious fervors that you know lead to gossipy hormonal teens like Winona Ryder to accuse Joan Allen and have her burned at the stake all for Daniel Day Lewis… we’re still cool.