Thursday, June 11, 2009
Trip to Boston
Yesterday I went on a field trip with my youngest son to Boston to do the Freedom Trail. To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to it - the being in a school bus with 20 11-somethings, walking around rainy, cold Boston and having to eat my boxed lunch outside. But, I was very pleasantly surprised to really enjoy it. Part of it had to do with just being able to be with my son, and being able to see how he learns and intereacts with his classmates. Another part of it also had to do with the guide who really made the history of Boston come alive for both the students and the adults on the trip. What I realized, however, is that you can often "travel" right in your own town, and be able to see the familiar in a new and different way. I have often walked the streets of Boston, but to be shown it's history from a new perspective and to be able to visualize how earlier citizens experienced it, gave me a new view of it. For me, travel is all about getting out of my own little world and experiencing something that is outside my own realm. What I really enjoy about traveling is the understanding that there are different experiences that are not of my frame of reference. Although the lives that I learned about yesterday were no longer being lived, to hear how they lived and why events unfolded as they did, made me view Boston in a very different light. While I prefer to travel outside of my town, days like yesterday serve to remind me that we are all travelers in a sense, and that new experiences can be right around the corner if you are open to it.
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Hi Alison-
ReplyDeleteSince you've got me thinking about Boston and its historic people, I wanted to share a good, old-fashioned read: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, by Esther Forbes (yes-the author of Johnny Tremain)published in 1942. I found a nice summary here: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Library/Archives/WAuthors/forbes/bio.html which says the book "relied heavily on letters of correspondence from Paul Revere. Esther made her readers feel that they knew Paul Revere, and she depicted Boston realistically at the time of the Revolution. It won the Pulitzer Prize in history for that year. 'Not every historical novelist can write a good biography, but the right kind of historical novelist has some of the qualities most needed in a good biographer. Esther Forbes is that kind of novelist, and her biography of Paul Revere takes at once a high and lasting place in American Literature.'(Book Review Digest 1942, 266) I found it old-fashioned and not at all progressive, but packed full of detail and very satisfying!