Paul Revere...again

You all know that I am in love with Paul Revere.  He and Henry Knox are my Revolutionary War heroes.  And you may remember this post from April when Paul Revere made me faint.

Well, more of the story is that Jacob had his ipod with him that day that I fainted.  But Jacob got his ipod taken away while we were in NY the following week, and he didn't get it back until last week when he had his surgery.   When we got home from the trip I put his ipod in my desk drawer and didn't look at it again.  I had never looked to see the pictures he had taken in Boston.  Turns out he had this beauty of my forehead.  You can clearly see where I smacked my head on the bricks.  I just had to share

This reminded me that I needed to do a book review of probably my favorite book I have read this year.

I highly recommend Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes.  Let's just say it didn't win the Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for nothing.  The storytelling is amazing.  Sure, it's non-fiction, but it is written as a story.  You actually can smell, hear and taste old Boston.  It tells the real story of who Paul Revere was and why he what he did to become an American legend, but it at the same time teaches what it was like to live in old Boston.  For instance:

"The skyline was dominated by steeples and the whole town by bells.  Everyone knew Christ's 'royal peal' and that New North's had a sour note.  King's Chapel's was deep and sad.  Old Brattle and Hollis had their bells.  Folk would stop in the street to count the 'passing bell' tolling out the sex and age of the deceased.  And they always ran to ask for whom the bell tolls.

"The bells rang wildly for fires or to call out the mob, joyfully for the repeal of certain acts of Parliament or the withdrawal of an especially unpopular royal governor.  They tolled over 'tyranny.'  They opened and closed the markets, and twice on Sabbath called all to church or meeting.  These were the great bells--the very voice of Boston.  Besides there were countless smaller ones.  Handbells rung on the street advertising 'wonders' and sales, or that it was two o'clock and 'The Bunch of Grapes' was about to serve dinner.  Schoolmasters rang for school, cowbells drowsed through the blueberry bushes and hardhack of the Common, and all day long, in hundreds of shops and houses, the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of doorbells.  In winter-time came the frosty sparkle of sleighbells as citizens rode out in their 'boobyhuts.'

"The music of bells is almost forgotten by modern ears.  Then it was everywhere."