American Holiday - 3
It is well worthwhile while staying at The Inn in Hastings Park to beg, borrow or steal bicycles. There seem to be more green-painted cycle roads around here than anywhere else in USA. You can certainly go all the seven miles to Harvard from Lexington. Most visitors here have their own cars, as well as driving around looking at some very fascinating small working farms with produce rather than animals, and checking out charming boutiques. If you want directions or, it seems, anything else, ask a staff member – Vanessa, above, particularly represents that age-old attribute, versatility – with a smile.
Do not miss the Concord Museum (it’s closed on Mondays). It is really beautifully curated, two floors, one room leading to another and another. There are several audio stands enabling you to listen to transcendalist Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, who led the quintessential New England movement asserting that basically Man Is Good. The stands also feature his follower, ardent abolitionist Henry Thoreau 1917-1862 – how sad, none of his four children married. And there are items from prehistory as well as 18th century indigenous peoples' artifacts.
As one would, correctly, imagine, museum highlights also definitely include as much as you can imagine from the battles of Lexington and Concord. There's also a lantern associated with Paul Revere's midnight ride, as immortalised in Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride, published in 1861, which recounted how, on 18 April 1775, a 20-year old silversmith rode out from Boston, heading for Lexington to warn that the British were coming. The Museum has well-planned temporary exhibitions: scheduled for Spring 2027 is Memory Sewn Into Cloth showing how historic quilts, personal objects, and fashion tell stories of families, economies and heritage, all sewn into cloth.
Girlahead thought about yesterday’s well worthwhile visit to Concord Museum as she breakfasted outside on the Inn’s front porch, below. She was especially mindful of history and the nature around. Plain wood tables, some covered with white linens, others simply bearing brown Chilewich mats (all tables have small vases of pink flowers).
There's lush greenery around but through it you can see the busy commuter traffic on Massachusetts Avenue, leading to Boston, 11 miles away. There's a cycle track to one side - some stalwarts apparently commute on two wheels, Paul Revere’s ride in reverse, in modern parlance. 200 meters to the right as we sit is a park, where last night there was an impromptu free concert. You get the feeling that really nothing's changed here, at least since yesterday.
