Boston 3: Library and Paul Revere

Yesterday Boston was in the 90s, but we intrepidly trepped out like we'd never trepped before!

We wanted to visit the Boston library because they might have genealogy stuff for Darwin and because . . . library!  This required working out the mass transit system, but fortunately I'm well-versed in subways after living in Europe.  Boston's was easier to figure out than most.  Darwin had never used a subway in his life, so I taught him the basics.  We bought passes for the week and hopped aboard the blue line, which dropped us right in front of our goal.

Darwin rooted around in the local history and family history room while I explored the library.  The Boston library was built back in the early 1800s, when libraries were built to resemble Greek temples.  Big, echoing vaults, long reading rooms, statues and paintings everywhere. It's half museum, really.  We found a 300-year-old table built of oak and marble that must have weighed 1000 pounds.  I surreptitiously tried to lift one side, and it was like lifting a house.  My . . . favorite work of art was the series of paintings in one gallery titled "The Triumph of Religion."  The series started with a bunch of Pagan gods (who looked vaguely Egyptian) doing awful things to hapless humans or their souls.  Then Christianity arrived, and everything turned lovely.  (No mention of the Inquisition or the Salem trials or . . . ) It was painted between 1895 and 1905 or so, but the artists left one panel blank for the Sermon on the Mount.  In the room were a pair of ceiling-high, glass-fronted cabinets--locked--with old books in them.  I told Darwin that the books were clearly magic, and the library had commissioned the paintings to keep the books under control, but without the final panel, the books could easily escape.  He wasn't as fascinated with the idea as I was.

After the library, we took the train over to the Italian section of town because that's where Old North Church and the statue of Paul Revere are (but of course).  By now it was getting on 5:00, when everything closes, and the ticket-taker just waved us through.

Ticket-taker? You mean all these important national monuments cost money to see?  Yes, they do.  You didn't think the actual US government gave them money for upkeep, did you?

Anyway, we were able to zip through the church quickly.  It was the same inside as all the other churches: a giant whitewashed room filled with boxed-in pews with a minster's stand at the front atop a short spiral stair.  This church also displayed the window through which, according to legend, the minister who hung the famous lanterns jumped in order to escape British soldiers.

We also examined the famous Paul Revere statue to our heart's content.  I pointed out to Darwin that the horse was plainly a stallion, a fact he was . . . disconcerted to learn.

It was truly hot and severely muggy, and we were more than a mile from the subway station that would take us to the flat.  So we sprang for a taxi.  Worth it!

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Published on August 03, 2018 12:08
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