Geographist

Welcome back to the Cradle of American Liberty!  If this is your first time seeing a post about Boston, I would encourage you to go back and look at some of the other information I've written about the historic city.  It seemed important to go back and finish looking into a few of the important sites before taking the blog in a new direction, and with that in mind I'd like to complete our review of Boston's Black Heritage Trail with the final site, the African Meeting House. As the 19th century began the legal freedom that many black residents of Boston enjoyed did not guarantee them equal rights.  Although they were permitted to attend the same churches as white Christians, they were not given membership voting rights or permitted to sit on first-floor pews.  A preacher named Thomas Paul had led a group that worshipped and Faneuil Hall, and by 1805 they organized as the First African Baptist Church.  By the end of the following year, land had been purchased and...

The school year has drawn to a close, and with it my official time as a homeschool dad is ending.  Let's take a look at how the final week went down. Sunday - When you live on the opposite side of a major city from your church, sometimes you're not inclined to travel back and forth multiple times in a day.  We didn't have much of a choice this time, however, as our activities at church required us to spend the majority of the day on campus.  After spending the morning having the usual service and Bible study, we stuck around for lunch and a Nerf war with our 5th graders, including Curly.  The rain that soaked town all week forced us inside, but these soon-to-be middle school kids didn't let that dampen their enthusiasm as they took over the hallways of the west tower.  Girly was supposed to have training in the evening to prepare her for the summer's Vacation Bible School, but the children's resident did us a huge favor and took the time to work with her individ...

We're racing ahead towards the school year finish line!  For some reason I didn't take many pictures of anything this week, so it's going to be a fairly text-heavy post this week.  Sunday - Mother's Day at church is always nice, and I was fortunate enough to have mine and my children's with me.  We waited too long to nail down details, unfortunately, so we were stuck going to a restaurant without a reservation.  I was actually glad to see the wait, however, because I've been told this is one of two days where food service will make or break their years (think of it like a culinary Black Friday).  So many good eateries have gone away during the past year.  No evening church activities meant we were free to wrap up our day without the extra trip across town, which I'm sure the car would have appreciated if it had thoughts or feelings about such things.  Monday - Each of the girls has been gradually wrapping up some of their school subjects for 2020-21....

In the midst of several pages being turned this week we saw the answers to many prayers, and for each one of them I'm exceedingly thankful!  Sunday - It was a nice day to have my mom alongside us on the pew for church, although she didn't stick around long enough afterwards to join us for lunch.  After the service she made her way over to the medical center to be with my dad while we all went to Bible study.  The afternoon only offered a brief amount of time for rest, however, as we had to return for a big children's choir presentation alongside our church orchestra.  The kids hadn't sung for us since Thanksgiving 2019, so it was a pretty special event.  All of my girls were on stage, with Curly taking her last turn in elementary before graduating up to the youth choir, Whirly singing with her current group one more time, and both Mrs. Geographist and Girly helping teach some of the younger grades.  It was a great show, and after all was said and done we al...

I don't think I ever thank each of you enough for taking the time to read through what I write.  Whether it's the Biblical, historical, or general day-to-day topics, I always try to put interesting content on the website so it's gratifying to see the number of hits on the site continue to rise.  April broke my own personal monthly record, and I'm hopeful that May can maintain that heat.  If you haven't checked out the devotional I wrote on this blog, Our Story With God (which is now published and available at many retail outlets), or my series on the history of Boston, I would welcome you to browse around those pages as well.  Back to the dad diary, however...the end-of-year activities are heating up, and for several of these they represent the first events of their kind in a very long time.  Let's make our way through the week together! Sunday - Our 5th grade classroom got a makeover this week, as we are once again allowed to have large group time before breaki...