Here in the Heart of New England

I have been in Worcester, Massachusetts for the last week or so. It's a pretty sad city. At some point everybody decided to move into the near suburbs, leaving the heart of Worcester desolate and lonely. But there are some real gems in this town. One of them is the American Antiquarian Society.

The AAS is a great big collection of old books. It has "American" in its title. But it is really a repository of New England greatness. This is true even of the portraits that they have in their main reading room. I sit at a table under the dome of the AAS, reading about Virginian controversies of the 18th century...but all the while John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is staring sternly down at me. Cotton Mather, just to his right, looks a lot more benign. You can see why he and Ben Franklin got along. And in a seated pose and with what can only be described as a heroic frame, Calvin Coolidge is bigger than any of them; he doesn't look at you, just stares off stage with a content expression on his face, as if he's just seen Hoover lose his re-election attempt.