Today is Patriots’ Day, that uniquely Massachusetts holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord — the original “Shot Heard Round the World” (Did You Know? The phrase’s progenitor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was referring to the Revolutionary War’s initial skirmish in Concord Massachusetts… before Franz Ferninand’s jugular was ripped open by a bullet, before the Aurora signaled the start of the October Revolution with a single blank shot, and long before Dick Cheney went hunting):
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
-from “Concord Hymn,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Boston celebrates Patriot’s Day by inticing the world’s most elite runners to come and run 26.2 miles in its ill-tempered early spring weather, and then shooting them… with cheers of encouragement, that is.
Last week in my conversational French class, prior to the start of the class and the official prohibition of English speaking, I was talking with two older women about crime in the well-heeled suburbs of Boston. One woman lamented her perceived increase of violent crime in the area. The other woman said, “There may be violent crime here, but rarely is it random violent crime.”
I resisted the urge to quip “That’s right, the only people who get shot are the ones who deserve it” and instead said “Oh, but what about that man in East Arlington last month who was prowling the streets with a gun?” They looked at me with disbelief. “Oh yeah. He lived there for 10 years and it turned out he was one of those nuts with a huge cache of guns,” I added.
“Whatever was he doing here, in Arlington? Why wasn’t he in New Hampshire or Texas?” They chortled lightly, with distaste.
I thought about them this weekend when hundreds of Revolutionary re-enactors descended on Arlington and its neighboring towns of Lexington and Concord with their fake muskets and cannons, eager to recreate this bloody yet victorious episode of America’s past during which the militia prevealed over the ruling forces. And we gentlefolk of Massachusetts, we applaud their theatrics for outcome that they espouse. We adore and honor our violent past with parades and celebration while clinging to our present-day moral superiority. We are the next revolution.
