I just published a diary on DKos on Paul Revere

[TayTay]

Cuz I am a big freakin history nerd and Palin's recent misunderstanding of history really pissed me off.

I wrote a brief (for me) recount of what really happened on that long ago April night and day.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/06/982521/-Paul-Revere,-Lexington-and-Concord-and-what-really-happened-in-April-1775?detail=hide

Sign. I had to do it. She activated by nerd side. MA takes it's history, and it's pols, seriously.

[Luftmensch067]

1. Recced and tipped

I really enjoyed reading that!

Love the way you make it come to life with modern allusions that help the reader feel that this was real life for people around here, not just a historical account.

[TayTay]

2. There are several things about that story that are gripping

Can you imagine being Gen. Gage's wife? Her natural sympathies are with her husband. But her natural sympathies are also with her countrymen. She was probably the source of Warren's information that the British would move by sea. It cost her her marriage and the trust of her husband.

She was put back to London in a vessel loaded with wounded troups from the battles at Lexington and Concord. What was that like being at sea for so long with wounded troops who might have incurred their injuries because of your actions? Amazing story.

Second favorite "item of place" that I couln't put in because it is nerd humor: the Americans often assembled at a pub near the present day Orange Line subway stop of Haymarket Square. The pub was called "Cromwell's Head." Damn if that doesn't reflect Mass humor. Name a bar after the severed relict of the guy you most admired a century ago in England. Lord Protector of the Realm and a Puritan in charge of England. Ah, we named a bar after you. LOL!

and thank you

[Luftmensch067]

3. I love that about Cromwell's Head, too!

Of course, they may have meant it as a Puritan equivalent of the innumerable pubs and taverns in England called The King's Head or The Queen's Head, but it still brings up thoughts of the severed heads flying around 17th century England...

Hey, I was just in those very parts on Saturday -- went to Maria's Pastry on the edge of the North End for the first time. YUM.

[ObamaKerryDem]

4. Hope you don't mind that I posted this to my FB-it's terrific! :)

Palin, very painfully obviously, needs to do some serious reading up on her history. Because someone who has such a dearth of understanding for history has no business making it, IMHO..

And Howard Dean, with all due respect to him, is worried about her in 2012 (per the thread in the General forum)? I'm sorry, maybe I'm just way too overconfidant, but give me a break!!! :)

[karynnj]

5. Great diary!

Funny thing was that I thought of you giving all of us excellent, real history lessons in Boston when we were there and the fact that Boston, itself, does so much to make the history accessible - even to school kids, though not obviously to Sarah Palin. The ironic thing is that her whole photo op was on America's early history. Yet her response would likely have simply gotten an "X" with no points given as a 6th grade short answer.

I wonder if anyone put Brown on the spot asking him whether Palin was wrong.

[TayTay]

6. I read history for many reasons,

one of them is a sort of internal compassion check. The whole battles of Lexington and concord don't stir just patriotic pride in me. I want to remember to feel compassion for the British soldiers who marched out of Boston on this death run. Those soldiers were terrified of what was going to happen. Some of them were just kids, 18 years old or younger. (I believe one fifer for a British regiment died that day. He was 15 years old)

The accounts of Lexington and Concord taken from records of town histories of this area report on the feelings that the men, and women btw, who mustered felt about those events. There was an enormous amount of sadness and horror. Terrible things happened that day, on both sides. Some people felt that the "Old North Bridge" area was haunted because a soldier who had been shot there was scalped by an American minuteman. (The Brit and a comrade were buried where the present day monument is.) There were many folks from that area who would not go near the bridge again because this British soldier had been treated so badly. That was an atrocity, a war crime, and it led to savage behavior on the other side. That was a terrible day here in MA.

There are so many lessons to learn from real history. We don't engage in war crimes or mistreat enemy soldiers because it can come back and bite us, as it did in Lexington and Concord. So sad.

We read history, or at least some of us do, to check our internal compassion meters. If I can wave away the layers of propaganda and feel the human side of what happened and feel the sorrow and loss in these events, then maybe I have a chance of hanging onto my humanity when bad events happen in my own lifetime. This is why I study history because it has so many things to teach me.

That lesson is way, way beyond Sarah Palin. I know that and I wouldn't expect her to know it. But I have to believe that I can still be touched by it and that maybe others can be as well. History, real history, matters. It touches our souls.