Thank you for not smoking, oh wait, what?

I am running behind on my blog series about Freedom Tour 2009, I am going to try to wrap it up this week. First off the posts will be much shorter, they were too long to write and too long to read. Second I am going to skip over some of the stories I tried to weave. For those waiting for the cliff hangers the thing that I saw that shocked me in CT was my fathers old van that my brother nick named Barny because it was eggplant purple, when they gave it to charity it was barely running but there it was in CT. Also we fired Michelle for a different GPS voice but they all sounded the same and all kinda stunk.

In case you need to catch up

Day One, Quincy

Day Two, CT

When we got to RI I immediately noticed the giant bridges in Newport and how much nicer they were then the bridges we have back home. I also noticed the giant church like slot hall. When we got to Newport almost every hotel in the city was booked because of a giant tennis event because apparently Newport is the tennis capital of the world, or so said the gentleman at Motel 6. I found the room to be hilarious because it was so utilitarian and stripped of any amenities, even the tv was just plopped on a desk almost hanging off the side. My favorite part of the room was the no smoking signs , they were conveniently placed on the bottoms of upside down ash trays, just in case you needed to catch a drag to let the fact that your in a smoke free room sink in I'm sure.

Rhode Island cemeteries are huge, I mean HUGE. The Newport one was big and the Providence one would of had its own zip code under different circumstances. All the pictures in this blog are from Newport due to the more interesting things we saw down there.

William Ellery was the first signer we went to visit, buried in Newport RI and apparently within a half mile of his home which was a common theme. What was amazing about Mr.Ellery was the fact that his grave site is surrounded by a nine foot steel fence. Not a wrought iron fence but a recent fence , I would say less then 30 years old. Some of the signers were literally on the sides of their father in laws graves and yet Ellery gets his own fortress, its curious to say the least. I think its a sad way to spend eternity, surrounded by fence.

Another curious site was this house right on the edge of the cemetery. The distance between that obelisk and the window of this home is less then 5 feet (yes I checked) and it is lined up with the window to boot. When I was younger I used to laugh at my cousin who would refuse to breath while we drove past the cemeteries in Everett and I would buy a home near a graveyard but this would be a little too much for me. Whats even weirder is they both seem to be from the same time period. At least he has a quiet neighbor I guess.

Down the street there were many more period homes and half of them were painted in monotones. One color for the whole house, no accent color. This has to be the reddest house Ive ever seen and I resided in a rose colored house for ten years! At least my house had white accents...

After Newport we headed over to Providence to wrap up the Rhode Island leg of our trip. This was one of the biggest cemeteries I have ever seen in my life, it had its own road map and took us several minutes just to DRIVE the length of it. Stephen Hopkins was buried under a medium sized obelisk that luckily was already photographed on another site. We managed to use our tree identification skills to find the tree that was in the online photo. We also managed to find the site of the founder of Brown University who had his own little chapel which is currently in very rough shape.

After hitting up the cemetery in Providence we headed to Brown University for lunch. Ive never been to Brown but can not understand how anybody lives there in the winter time. The gradient on the hills was so low that they had warning signs posted all over the place. In 80 degree heat it was a pain, in sleet I could imagine people losing their grip and falling to their death on the jagged ice below. Brown reminded me of a mini Harvard in the sense that their yards are very similar and the architecture looked alike as well especially when compared to the Gothic Revival of Yale.

Lunch was pretty good, we went to this Greek place that was pretty good but not outstanding. The condiments were sitting in the table in their original containers, including the olive oil. Now it was not a fancy place but it sure was more done up then a diner I expected my salt to be in a shaker and my olive oil (Greek remember) to be in a container of some sort. Maybe it's just me. After several days of heat and humidity and being away from a reliable source of iced tea for so long I was getting a little cranky and the thought of tackling that hill again was putting me in a funk. That's when I saw the holy grail, Tealuxe ! I always thought that only two existed in the WHOLE WORLD. Boston and Cambridge, but low and behold here it was in Providence. First I found my fathers old car and now this, surely this was a miracle. Walking inside I immediately noticed it was larger then my local haunt in Harvard Square and the staff was larger as well. On any given day their is a tea rotation of four different teas and I was very happy to see that Golden Monkey was on tap today! Golden Monkey only shows up once a week tops and here it was, right in front of me , miles away from home. No this was no miracle, this was Providence.

The day ended back in Boston where we hit up my brothers graduation party. Pool, air hockey, lots of food, beer, video games, it was a good night. Great way to end the day, I was ready to tackle New Hampshire.

Ground Control to Michelle: Do You Read?

This is my second installment of my blogs focus on Freedom Tour 2009. For those of you unaware Freedom Tour 2009 is (was) a trip around New England that my friend Chris and I took with a main focus of visiting the grave sites of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from New England. The trip is part of a series of trips that Chris has taken across the country, taking pictures of every grave site of every signer. I was without computer access for most of the past week so will be retroactively blogging about each of the past three days in separate blogs and will address some over arching themes in another blog. I envision a full 5 blog series if you include the Adams posting from last week. Also while we visited the signers, this blog is more about the trip itself and my observations then the signers. Chris will be working on a much larger project on the signers and I do not want to jump ahead of him on that (so minimal pictures of the actual signers graves on this blog) if you want to know more let me know.

Friday morning was the start of the road trip and we headed out the door in the pouring rain to head for Connecticut. We had a GPS but it was not operational due to my power adapter in the car not working so a decision was made to use my cellphone, which has GPS capability for the navigation portion of the trip. The voice on the GPS was named Michelle on the phone and I began to wonder if she knew what she was doing. On the agenda for the day was to visit the sites of the four Connecticut signers: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams and Oliver Wolcott. These guys all lived in far reaching parts of the state so we started off with the farthest away and moved our way in. By early afternoon we had reached Litchfield CT for the first signer.

Upon reaching the Litchfield exit we rode through several miles of side highways each smaller then the last. It was also about this time that Michelle began acting funny and was more quiet then usual. She had failed to inform us that we were almost out of battery power because the GPS had been draining the battery the whole time we were driving down the major highway for miles and miles, she was not smart enough to stop calculating while we were going between long periods. Luckily we were on a main street near multiple stores so decided to just pick up a map and make out way over the old fashioned way, after all we were sure we could just charge the phone during lunch. Much to my surprise CVS did not have of the state, the supermarket did not have a map and the auto supply store did not have a map to purchase either. They all had the same answer "No we do not have maps, we used to about a year ago but not anymore. Did you try XYZ." It was at this moment that I realized the state of the world we were in. We are becoming addicted to the internet and computers, so much so that local stores no longer carry maps like they used to, I remember maps being a staple at CVS and Walgreens. It is not until you lose your technology that you realize the addiction has taken hold. We finally found the maps at a gas station down the street, a random older man who heard us looking for a map told us to try it once we got outside CVS. Small town stores are up on the times enough to take out the maps, it is good to know some of the older folks are still keeping track of where the rest of the maps are. Upon leaving the gas station I saw a site that was akin to the graves we would be looking at later in the day, something I thought had moved on long ago but was still alive and kicking, all the way down here in Litchfield CT. If your curious read the blog I will post later on this week about overall themes, I currently do not have the pictures I need for this to mesh out because you see my cellphone was my camera and was dead so I need to wait for Chris to upload.

The rain finally ended as we approached the first site but notbefore turning the whole state of CT into a giant humid swamp. In what would become a theme for the four signers in CT we came across the cemetery , on the side of a small highway. Oliver Wolcott is buried in a cemetery right out of a Steven King book. The trees were all overgrown, there were numerous tombstones haphazardly strewn across the land and the tombstones had a black patina that had formed on their surfaces but had then begun melting off of the stones. I am assuming the patina is due to the soot and pollution from the nearby highway mixed with the subtropical haze I felt over the whole city of Litchfield. Wolcotts were buried on a small mound and were guarded by a short fence surrounding the family plot. The town center seemed quite nice and Wolcotts home is still standing although I am not sure what it currently is.

Upon leaving Litchfield out next mission was to make our way to Yale University where Roger Sheman was buried on the outskirts of the campus at the time. New Haven reminded me of Cambridge to a degree, mainly because of the presence of Yale. Being lucky we found a parking spot right near the cemetery , which was professionally administered, a stark contrast to the Wolcott site. The large cemetery had little pathways just like a more moder cemetery but still had many interesting graves. Eli Whitney is also in the same neighborhood making it a fairly popular place. This was my first siting of a revised tombstone on the trip where the original stone was hard to read due to erosion over time but a more moder granite slab was added nearby to replicate the tombstone. After visiting the sites we headed over to the Yale campus and I noticed one thing immediately, the Yale tshirts. Working in Harvard Square I see many people with Harvard shirts on but they are all mostly tourists or possibly a random cheerleader wearing the sweatpants with the little Harvard Insignia on them, but never a student. At Yale I saw dozens of people who were obviously students sporting Yale shirts. I found it to be odd because Yale and Harvard are so similar on many other levels.

The Yale campus is very Gothic, everything looks like an old European church even the gym. the walls bled down to the pathways which were also the same color. The entire place had a religious feeling and the sea of paved pathways is something I am not used to. Yale does beat Harvard on secret society buildings. Lampoon Castle is imposing but right outside the cemetery there is a building with a snake themed wrought iron fence and appeared to be a white square temple type building with no windows. Then there was the Skull and Bones building which looks like it has not be spruced up for years. The grass is overgrown, the granite pilings out front are broken and there appeared to be garbage strewn about. This all adds up to make it appear a little more mysterious but I do want to implore anyone who knows a member or ex member that they really should consider hiring a landscaping service, I'm sure they could afford it.

While lunchtime had come and go Chris and I decided to get as far away from major cities as possible before rush hour started. This brought us to Branford CT where we took in some excellent seafood from a slightly tacky fish place right near the water. While driving down the highway we saw a sign that said "Best Seafood in CT" so we decided to make a go of it, after all if a billboard says its the best seafood in the state who am I to argue. After making our way to the exit the signs stop and we are left to our own devices to figure out where this place is. After paying so much for a sign on the interstate you would think they would get themselves one of the little signs with an arrow on it... Long story short we ended up going the wrong way for a few miles before turning and coming back. When we saw the giant lobster in a bucket on the roof of a building we knew we found the place, USS Chowder Pot III .

Upon entering the restaurant, tired and sore from driving, we were immediately seated in a room that saw its best days in 1975 based off of the portholes on the wall and the wood paneling around the room. I enjoyed the decor for its charm, it gave me confidence in the quality of the outcome. My main objective was to get my phone charged which proved to be more difficult then I had thought it would be. The woman who seated us told me they had no spare plugs in the whole restaurant, even as she pointed to an 2 socket wall unit with only one thing plugged in. As she seated me I asked if she could inquire with a manager for us, we never saw her again. Annoyed but determined I asked out waitress who I knew would be easier to persuade, after all SHE is the one that depends on our tips. She was happy to help, took the phone and told her manager we were out of state and I desperately needed my phone for the next leg of our trip for the GPS (truth be told I also was missing my camera abilities and of course access to my email.) She seemed annoyed with the woman who seated us when she even noted there was a plug in the booth behind us where she could have sat us before 2 new customers came in. The bread was smothered in some sort of sugary butter that gave the bread a sweet savory taste. Chris overheard a woman two tables over talk on and on about how great the bread was and how she came over to CT from some western state just for the bread at this place. If you ever go the food is great, the scallops are fresh and make sure you ask for Kelly, she was a great waitress and even made sure my phone got charged for the next leg!

Making our way back east, now with my camera capability and GPS we find another roadside site , this time it was for William Williams . Michelle was back on track helping us find the next stop she had rested up slightly and was doing well this time around. I felt bad for William Williams for many reasons, first off was stuck with the same name twice. It reminds me of the Newsradio quote "Jimmy James, the man so nice they named him twice", which also goes to prove I can work a good Newsradio or Simpsons quote into any conversation. His grave is on the side of a rural highway and worst of all he went and married the daughter of someone with more power then him. Jonathan Trumbull was the Governor of CT and went on to erect a large mausoleum style grave for himself and his wife with Williams and his wife being delegated to being literal hanger ons , their stones erected on the side of the mound that made up the earthen mausoleum for his father in law. Also unlike other signers in CT he lacked a formal badge that stuck into the ground to signify his status as being involved in the revolution or an American flag, he also played second fiddle to his father in law on the sign out on the road. It should be noted that Trumbull did have a flag and a plaque stuck in the ground for him. Is this an over site or is this due to Williams late involvement in the signing of the document (check the wikipedia article.) Determined to be done with CT by nightfall we head out to the last stop.

Samuel Huntington is not in a cemetery on the side of the road, in fact it is not even on the main road. The main entrance was accessible only by a small alley sized street that ended with the cemetery gates. Upon entering the gates this cemetery is a mix of all the others we had seen already. It was well kept but a little haphazard as well. French soldiers were honored in a series of grave sites and it became clear that this cemetery had some interesting history to it as we approached a plaque and a site that had candles in front of it.

We had found the grave stone of Benedict Arnold's mother. The very thought of it was a little shivering as I had known him to be buried in London due to his back stabbing of the country during the war. The plaque was erected by named benefactors, and it claimed to be at the spot where Arnold was when they lowered his mother into the ground. The reason behind the plaque is a mystery to me, as are the candles. Who is still holding Arnold's mother in such high regard as to replace her candles every so often? I realize the sins of the son are not the sins of the mother but it still makes you think. The plaque does mention the razing of the stones of Arnold's father (I believe) and son after his treason was uncovered.

There was a large Huntington grouping of stones a hundred feet back from Arnold's mother but no Samuel. We ended up finding a babbling brook and found a bridge that took us across to a very large monument structure, we found Samuel Huntington. The local historical society is trying to get the federal government to recognize Huntington as the first US President as he was President of the Continental Congress. This could explain why the brick was new and the whole area was so well kept, it was redone in the past decade. In addition it appears that the babbling brook we heard had been re routed from an earlier meandering brook earlier on the grounds as to creating a more gushing and impressive area.

After saying fair well to Huntington we made our way to RI for the second leg of the tour. Michelle was wearing down once again and chose to stop talking to us, the GPS was still working but the battery was low once again. We took 138 and made our way to Newport RI, crossing an impressive bridge we saw a giant church like building with only the word SLOTS written on it. I knew I must have been seeing things so we started looking for a place to spend the night...

Tales From the Political Crypt

This blog post chronicles the kick off of Freedom Tour 2009, which is a semi geeky way of saying my friend and I are traveling around New England to visit the grave sites of the signers of the declaration of Independence who are intermed in the New England area. This is part of a "quest" of his which has brought him across the country visiting sites in many states. Our friendship started in 2003 when we were both interning in John Kerry's DC Senate office in 2003 so that also might explain our geekiness towards this subject (my history geek credentials are much more evident being a Political Science major in college with a minor in Constitutional History and involvement with campus history and political groups.)

I promised a crypt and I will deliver, do not worry we will get there at some point.

Sunday brought us down to Quincy Massachusetts, home of Dunkin Donuts, Stop and Shop, the former Democratic State Treasurer, the Adams family and my friend Mike who was not in attendance. The historic district looked quite nice all decked out in Adams banners, clean streets, and plenty of New England charm even if it was sometimes a little feigned with the faux Tudor building across from the grave yard. The available signage was quite handy and it became apparent very quickly that this was a longer stop then we had originally thought.

After entering the tourist office for the Adams Historic site we found out that it was free to enter any historic park that day, nationwide, I had not heard that anywhere but hey free is free. The museum was like most other tourist museums, lots of stuff under glass and a large gift shop. There was also a video playing in the back and some replicas of the homes (they are a mile away, not sure why we are subjected to this when I will see it in person.) It turns out that the tour comes with a trolley ride to the three houses the park service owns that used to belong to the Adams family.

Yes yes there will be a grave site SOON I promise , calm down.

The first two houses were rather uneventful. They started in one, moved to the other one, and they are right next to each other. Seemed more modern day suburban subdivision then colonial agricultural , especially considering the fact that they were originally not owned by the same people and it was not in the center of town. While taking the tour we find out that Abigail made her own bullets out of pewter for the war effort, had John send over china from France that she would resell and was subjected to numerous dress fires that required the children to douse her with water. No where were her efforts, failed efforts, to bring him back by sending a horse to Philadelphia for him mentioned (via Universal Hub, HEY this blogger has the same template as me!!!) Of course I took it upon myself to bring it up later on between stops, what is the use of some juicy colonial gossip if you don't use it.

Things got a little more exciting at the "old house" otherwise known as "Peacefield" where there was more excitement among the tour guides and actual period furniture was in use. Many of the rooms were sectioned off, which is a pet peeve of mine which can be seen in a previous blog. There was an interesting storyline in this house as we were brought from one period to the next, and finally to the "First Presidential Library" which was a stone building built after the death of John Adams to store his books. It was a nice room, not nearly as big as say the Kennedy library but hey big companies did not exist to fund these projects yet.

Our tour guide shared all sorts of gossip about the 4 generations of Adams' that lived in the house. How Abigail did not like Louisa (wife of John Quincy), how the wife of one grandchild was such a fan of her servants bells that they literally cut her bell off in the kitchen, and how John Adams would allow people to spend the night but his house did not have a hallway between his study and his bedroom which led to him stepping over visitors at 4am (Abigail in her wisdom installed a hallway to prevent this later on, she also lowered the floors in part of the house when she wanted higher ceilings and was told they could not be raised up any higher.) I was all for this gossip but the guide did make a blunder or maybe it was a historical revision and it involved Andrew Jackson.

The tour guide goes on to tell us about Louisa Adams and her European upbringing, oh how she liked to throw large parties and oh how much the socialites (if not historians and others) loved her so. She was so generous with her parties that she even threw one for General Andrew Jackson who was relatively unknown at the time and would go on to return the favor by beating John Quincy Adams for the presidency... hold on BRAKES PLEASE. It was by a quick bite of my tongue that I avoided challenging the tour guide to a duel (as I am sure Jackson would have done.) Anyone who knows me knows that I have a fondness for the General and therefor a distaste for John Quincy Adams. As we all know Jackson was very well known by the time he ran for president, he was an accomplished General, Territorial Governor, Senator, Congressman and established socialite. His reputation was well known throughout the colonies before any such party. Granted it was a grand party but lets be honest it was obviously a rouse on her part to try to sway Jackson to her husbands side. Old Hickory went on to win the popular vote before having the election stolen from him by Congress for the political insider John Quincy Adams, I'm sure this sounds nothing like any recent elections we have had. THEN he went on to beat JQA four years later. Just so were all on the same page here. Yeah yeah there was an accusation of Jefferson saying untrue things about Adams senior but I am in no position to defend number 3.

I of course wait until wait until were back on the trolley to inform my friend of the grave injustice of what happened on the tour. I vaguely remember tossing around the terms "Adams style revisionist history" and possibly charlatan. I am sure by this point our fellow trolley riders are either enthralled or confused. I'm sure it was a mixture of both.

Back in the middle of town our tour is over so we head over to the United First Baptist Church where both the Presidents Adams are buried along with their wives. The first thing you see is a giant rainbow flag, my first reflection is wondering how upset John Adams would be over this but then come to the conclusion that as a man who opposed slavery at a time when everyone else condoned it and as someone who believed in separation of church and state that he would be behind the LGBT movement if he were alive today, just a hunch. The church is very nice and we were greeted by a very nice tour guide and end up on a tour alone with just us and the guide. This proved to be very informative and fun until she brought up the Louisa Adams party for Jackson and how that allowed him to win the presidency blah blah blah, what is going on here! Seriously she doesn't even work for the parks service, who is feeding these people these talking points. We got to sit in the Adams family pew before heading downstairs to the crypt. Our guide informs us that photography is ok, which was a no no everywhere else. We get to the crypt and she leads us into this little room that is barely tall enough to stand in with the four caskets.

Here we are, after being told not to touch anything, we are standing in a crypt surrounded by two Presidents. We can touch the granite caskets, she leans on one to tell us a story. I feel surreal as I look around knowing that we were that close to two presidents and nobody else was around. The crowds at the museum never made it to the church. The tour guide decides to go upstairs and leaves us down in the crypt alone, another surreal moment for me, after having a tour guide in the old Adams homestead give us the evil eye for falling behind to stop and look at a painting. I understand how this works now, chair that may have belonged to the great grandson of John Adams = more important then Adams himself. Check. Amazingly enough there seemed to be a daycare center for the parish children within feet of the crypt (lots of pictures drawn by children on the wall, and toys on the floor.)

One last oddity we saw was the plaque outside for Louisa Adams. The rest were very flattering of the occupant, hers starts off

"Frail of body, simple in tastes, and retiring in nature,

She filled the onerous positions to which it pleased God

To assign her with grace, dignity and fortitude."

Talk about your back handed compliments!