Saturday – Freedom Trail

Success – I have found a nice French- ish café 10 minute walk away for my morning coffee and croissant. This morning, while there, I read the Boston Globe. One of the articles was an orbituary of a lady who had done all sorts of good work in the community. She was known to like a quote attributed to St Francis of Assisi “ Preach the gospel at all times and , when necessary, use words” . I like it. I also read an article about college students and it was using the word ‘hazing’ From Wiki : hazing is a term used to describe various rituals and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group.. I have never heard the term before.

Today’s focus was the Freedom Trail. This is a walking trail linking different buildings and sites that were important in Boston and America’s history. The sites are not in time order – just geographic, which I found a bit annoying at first. I think for me the highlight was the King’s Chapel. The first chapel on this site was built in 1688, but replaced with bigger, existing one in 1749. After the Revolution the congregation switched from Anglican to Unitarian. The pulpit is the oldest in the USA still in use on its original site. It reminded me of St Martin in the Fields in London with its boxes for the congregation families and a central aisle and 2 side aisles. These boxes had benches facing both ways. The parents could watch the kids, but the minster could only see into the box when he was in the pulpit. They have music recitals every Tuesday.

I also saw several burial grounds; the Old City Hall, used from 1865 to 1969 ; Old South Meeting House, built in 1729 for Puritan religious services and used for town meetings ; a church from where the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave his first anti slavery speech ; Old State House , built in 1713, served as the seat of the colonial and state government , and is now the oldest public building in Boston; the Old North Church where the lanterns were hung to signal the beginning of Paul Revere’s ride – widely regarded as the spark that ignited the American Revolution; Paul Revere’s house. Apart from all his meetings he had time to father 16 children – 8 each from 2 wives, and work as a silversmith.

In the middle of those things , in a long thin bit of parkland, has been built, fairly recently, a Holocaust Memorial. It starts with a plaque that links the Freedon Trail to the freedom of the Jews from the Nazi oppression. Then there are a series of 6 tall thin glass towers symbolising the Nazi’s principal death camps. Each column is covered with numbers – the prison numbers of the Jews killed.- and quotes from famous Jewish people. You walk along a path that links the towers and walk through the towers. Near the end I thought ‘ what is all that steam coming out intermittently from the inside of the glass towers?’ Oops, a harmless gas. At much the same time I remembered the chopped off branch of my family tree. It was quite moving and I found a bench to sit on and contemplate everything and nothing for a while.

The Freedom Trail goes through the North End of Boston – known as the Italian area. I heard many local Italians walking around the streets ( I added quite a few extra loops to the Freedom trail) . I presume they were local because they were talking slowly, like many American people seem to do,. Certainly slower than Italians in Italy. I could follow conversations. I had some really delicious seafood stuffed canneloni .

The Freedom Trail continues over the river , through a historic dockyard – another day. I walked back to my apartment, pottered for half an hour and then went to the breakfast café to try them out for late afternoon tea – purely research. The pear tart was delicious. Much nicer than the peculiar crème brule tart of the previous day. I finished the newspaper.