Our friend Jan came dinner last night (pecan waffles with fresh fruit toppings–bananas, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries). As former schoolchildren in Massachusetts, she & Linda both knew that tomorrow, Saturday 4/18, is the anniversary of “Paul Revere’s Ride.” With that memory they started Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem: “Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,/On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; . . . .” Being that in writing Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America, I learned about Sybil Ludington’s ride, twice the distance as Paul’s, through a stormy danger-filled night, I pulled out a copy of Berton Braley’s poem, “Sybil Ludington’s Ride,” written in the form of Longfellow’s poem’s: “Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of a lovely feminine Paul Revere/Who rode an equally famous ride/Through a different part of the countryside,/Where Sybil Ludington’s name recalls/A ride as daring as that of Paul’s.” One of our women’s stories road trips was to Carmel, New York, to view and photograph the spectacular statue by Anna Hyatt Huntington of Sybil atop her horse Star.
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