August 7, 2013

We made the decision to sleep in this morning.  We knew it was going to be a long day and I wanted us to be agreeable instead of tired and cranky by the end of it.

Sleeping in meant getting up at 6 for Scott and I to shower and eat before all of us had to be on the 7:20 train into Boston. The kids really enjoy riding the train and I love that they already know how to get around on public transportation without feeling overwhelmed by it.

We rode to Brookline which is a suburb of Boston and walked .6 of a mile to Frederick Law Olmsted's house and business offices. This is where he designed landscape projects like Boston's Emerald Necklace (their parks system) and Biltmore House. His sons eventually took over the offices and eventually it came to the NPS. They had over 65,000 photographs, over 135,000 drawings, plot layouts and design plans that they repaired and restored for other urban planners and landscape architects to come and research. It not only serves as a museum but also research archives which is really cool.

Next we walked back to the 'T' and caught another train to JFK's boyhood home. We stopped at pizza place across from Boston University that is the same age as me. We love eating where the locals eat and there were multiple groups of BPD in there. The pizza was good.  The JFK site is where he was born and lived for his first 3 years.  It was a private residence at the time of his death but people turned out by hundreds on the street to mourn him here and it was later bought back by the family and given to the parks service. It was a modest house by today's standards but at the time, you could tell they had money.

Again we boarded the T and took it to Harvard Square. We walked about .7 of a mile to the Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters site.  The kids were over ranger led tours.  Most of the parks we have been to have been self guided but in Boston they really want you to get the history so the only way to see some things is to do the ranger led tours.  I wanted to do it and we made it in for the last tour of the day at 4:00.  We were probably two hours behind my original schedule.  I obviously did not lag enough time for Boston but I also think we could spend two weeks here and still not see everything.  But we are picking up all of the national parks which for me, are the things that count.  The house is from 1759 and had several owner but since Longfellow lived there is has only been in his family and then on to the parks service.  His daughter and grandson preserved the house just as he had it and I was particularly struck by the value of the historical items in the house.  Paintings of famous people, marble busts, and books.  I mean a LOT of books; complete collections of various authors.  Not to mention the amazing pieces of furniture.  Sometimes tours are boring but I found the personal stories really moving.  One famous poem that Longfellow wrote was called The Village Blacksmith about a blacksmith neighbor that lived down the street.  It talks about a Chestnut tree.  Some years later, that tree was cut down by the city of Cambridge and Longfellow was very saddened by it.  Some children in the neighborhood got together and had some of the wood saved and had a chair made out of the wood with intricate carvings and some of his poems engraved on it and gave it to him as a gift.  Then he wrote another poem about the chair and would give the kids in the neighborhood copies when they came to visit.  The stories that were told made me instantly like the person that he was.  This house was also the headquarters for Washington during 1775 when he first took command of the American army and the British were surrounded in Boston.  From this point he could see the comings and goings on the river.  The kids completed their junior rangers and I bought to books and we headed over to Harvard.  We walked in the yard, joked about being accepted and possibly planted a seed that even Harvard is possible for college then took pictures at the buildings and headed to the tshirt shop.  I had a sweatshirt in high school that I loved and held onto for too many years.  I have been looking for one as comfortable for years and found it at Harvard.  

We hopped the 'T' back to the commuter train station, grabbed some dinner and boarded the train back to the FunV.  Boston has been good to us but we are headed towards relaxation in Acadia.