“Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1836) “What did you do in this world that cannot be killed? What did you leave behind that the wind can’t blow away? A thing of beauty is here forever. Nothing can kill the beautiful deed.” Brother Blue, eulogy for Igor Fokin at… (read more)
“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” King James Bible, Matthew 5:14. “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our… (read more)
“One if by land, and two if by sea: And I on the opposite shore shall be.” The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. First published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1861 . “We returned from Cambridge by way of Charlestown. Crossing that ferry to Boston…” Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Entry Wednesday, August 15, 1744… (read more)
Most of my rambles around Boston have been in the ‘neighborhoods’, the areas added to the original town on the Shawmut peninsula over the course of the century after the creation of the United States of America. This is not in any way a rejection of ‘ye olde towne’; in fact, the profound historical complexity… (read more)
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there “ Opening line from The Go-Between, by L.P. Hartley, 1953. I had the great good fortune some years ago to study with the late Eugen Weber, one of the most charismatic lecturers I have had the pleasure to hear. Fortunately for us, many of… (read more)
The Muddy River at Washington Street in Brookline is unimpressive. Water from Leverett Pond on the south passes through a culvert under the street and drains into a small, almost unnoticeable creek on the north side, to continue to eventually to the Charles River. And yet, merely by crossing the narrow ‘stream’ below the latest… (read more)
A brief analysis of the routes out of Boston to Watertown and beyond, also called the Upper Post Road. It is easy to take the relative ease of travel in the modern world for granted. I recently visited India for the first time and, in the course of traveling, I reflected how long and difficult… (read more)
“Rightly to estimate the present, we must invoke the past, of which we ourselves are the product, and its study cannot fail to teach us the importance of perpetuating those elements of true greatness in New England character bequeathed to us by our Puritan ancestry, and in which their descendants take a justifiable pride.” Francis… (read more)
The following unwieldy table is an attempt to summarize the 2010 Census for the specific precincts through which the Upper Road to Braintree passes. This chart is meant to accompany the previous entry, Taking the High Road in Roxbury and Dorchester. My intention is merely to highlight the fact that the road passes through neighborhoods… (read more)
The Last of the ‘Old Roads’ from Boston is the road variously referred to as ‘The Way to Braintree’ or the ‘Upper Road to Dorchester.’ It is the last in the sense that the road was laid out in the 1660s to provide a shorter route to the bridge over the Neponset River at what… (read more)
