The World Among Us
As we gathered in the hotel lobby before heading to the Old North Church in Boston, I tried to get directions. A hotel employee who didn’t seem to know for sure himself how to get there tried to help me in an accent I could hardly decipher. He told me over and over again to “turn light at the light” at the corner of the hotel.
We learned that Bostonians call the area around the Old North Church the North End. Our destination was an attraction from the American Revolution; but when we turned “light (right) at the light,” we saw history and the world of the world on our way to and within the North End.
We passed the Old State House, built in 1713, where the British royal governor ruled the Massachusetts colony for the king of England and spoke his decrees to the city from its balcony. The Boston Massacre occurred in front of this royal building in 1770. Six years later Bostonians first heard the words of the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the Old State House.
We paused at Faneuil Hall, a meeting place since merchant Peter Faneuil had the building constructed and donated it to the city in 1742. Faneuil’s parents were French Huguenots who had emigrated to America to escape religious persecution. On the cold and sunny afternoon when we walked past, a large group had gathered outside to watch talented young African American men dancing. It was fun to watch them teach middle aged white men from the crowd how to do the same moves. They all looked like they were having a good time.
On top of Faneuil Hall was its celebrated golden grasshopper.
Soon we entered Boston’s Little Italy with its many upscale Italian restaurants.
On the side of one building we saw evidence of Thomas Edison‘s technological impact on Boston. This marker read: Salem Street Station, Edison Electric Illuminating Company, 1909.
Inside the Old North Church was this plaque from 1980, presented by members of a Church of England congregation in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. It commemorated the voyage their fellow Anglicans made to the area 350 years before.
St. Stephens Catholic Church stands in sight of the Old North Church. The former Unitarian meeting place became a Catholic Church in 1862, during the time that most of the residents of the North End were Irish.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, mother of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was christened at St. Stephens in 1890 when she was one day old. Her funeral was held here after she passed away at 105.
The Armenian American community of Massachusetts donated this small park to the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the City of Boston in recognition of the hope and refuge they have offered to immigrants.
This sculpture in the park honors one and half million Armenian residents of the former Ottoman Empire who died in a genocide there between 1915 and 1923.
We closed our evening with a visit to Quincy Market where Bostonians can take out international foods from several countries or carry it upstairs to one of the tables close to the market’s dome.
Ray and I chose Italian foods from two different vendors before sharing a piece of Boston Cream Pie (of course).
Flowers brightened the streets all over the North End and near our hotel. Forsythia bushes remind me my grandmother. Down south we keep them in the ground, but they looked pretty in pots, too.
People from England, France, Africa, Italy, Ireland, Armenia, the homeland of the man who told us to “turn light at the light,” and their descendants have called Boston home sweet home. Boston is one of our nation’s many places where homeschooling families can go on a mini-tour of the world.
. . . and He made from one man
every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined their appointed times
and the boundaries of their habitation,
that they would seek God,
if perhaps they might grope for Him
and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us . . .
Acts 17:26-27