I grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a small town most notable in recent years as the origin point of John Linnell and John Flansburgh, better known as the pop group They Might Be Giants. And before you ask, yes — in fact, I knew those guys very well, especially in high school, where we worked together on the school newspaper.
Lincoln, like neighboring Concord and Lexington, was and is heavily invested in local history. We had and have groups dedicated to recreating the events that led off the Revolution, with fife-and-drum companies and families who dressed up in Colonial costume to re-enact the meeting of the Minutemen and the Redcoats. Here's a video from 2009:
My mother had memorized Longfellow's poem, and the occasion would invariably find her reciting it with aplomb. And wikipedia notes:
Paul Revere was captured by British soldiers in Lincoln on the night of April 18, 1775. Minutemen from Lincoln were the first to arrive to reinforce the colonists protecting American stores in Concord.
So the foundation had long ago been laid for the material in today's diary (you were wondering when I'd get around to it, weren't you?).
My last Climate Letter diary covered two of my letters which had been published in the Boston area.
Buried in that diary was this comment by FishOutOfWater, who said, in his usual pithy way:
Paul Revere was an alarmist (10+ / 0-)
And the British were coming.
Climate scientists are today's Paul Reveres.
Well, I'm not one to look a gift meme in the mouth, and I've been using the Paul Revere analogy regularly since then. Three of those letters have been published, suggesting that the connection is a robust one in the minds of editors.
Here they are, in chronological order. Please steal them, file off the serial numbers, reverse the order of the clauses, and send them along. You'll probably have better luck with smaller local & regional papers, which get fewer letters and have higher word limits than the big dailies.
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