Movie about Paul Revere's ride slated for filming this fall.

"The goal is to shoot in Massachusetts," said Dawson, who mentioned Concord and Lexington as areas of interest. "We have to make the numbers work."

Via Beantown Bloggery, who can't fathom the idea they would actually film this anywhere else:

No one wants to see him riding through the hills of Vermont to warn about the British.

Wade Roush walks around, photographs the ghost cloverleaf of Canton, built for the Highway that Never Was - the Southwest Expressway meant to gouge through Boston and Cambridge (along the route of today's Orange Line, basically).

J.L. Bell posts a copy of the official rules for Harvard freshmen in 1741, such as:

No Freshman shall be saucy to his Senior, or speak to him with his hat on.

Faegirl spots the modern-day Paul Revere after he rowed across the Harbor to Charlestown.

Once again, the Regulars marched right through Lexington Green at dawn, killing a few colonists standing in their way as they headed toward Concord in search of militia munitions.

You learn a lot at the annual re-creation of the battle (which from start to finish, takes maybe five minutes, and most of that is the British soldiers assembling, locking bayonets and shouting "Huzzah!" before they shoot the first Minuteman and then stomp on him). To start, somebody from the Lexington Minutemen gives you an explanation of what you're about to see.

But you also learn that there are a couple thousand other insane people willing to get up before the crack of dawn to watch the battle. And because of that, and because Lexington Green is flat, you learn that if you ever make the trek again, you either need to make like the veteran battle-goers and bring a ladder to climb up on (or, at the minimum, a sturdy bucket) or you need to be nine years old and adept at worming your way through the crowd to the very edge of the battlefield.

It was puzzling at first to hear the victorious Redcoats march off the Green while their fifers played "Yankee Doodle Dandy," until I remembered that they were playing it to insult the Minutemen - who, by the end of the day, adopted the song as their own.

Father: So what'd you think?
Son: It's the same every year.

The dead, the dying and the incongruous:

Calm amid the chaos:

BattleRoad.org has a complete calendar of events for today and tomorrow - and historical info.

J.L. Bell finishes up destroying every myth we hold dear about Paul Revere, ending with the fable that his ride actually made a difference.

Photos: Patriots Day in Concord.

You know the one - Stanley Forman's portrait of hate showing a white guy holding a black guy in front of City Hall so another white guy can try to spear him with an American flag. Now there's a book about the incident: The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America.

The Los Angeles Times reviews the book today.

It wasn't "The British are coming!"

He's had quite enough:

I decided to start blogging from the grave due to the preponderance of mistruths and inaccuracies that have spread across the people by virtue of biographical books and television series. It appears that a host of lecherous pundits and writers have jumped on the John Adams bandwagon. Even in the grave, these hangers-on are annoying and aggravating. So, good people, I have decided to enter the Blogesphere, as i believe it is called, not to correct the inaccuracies of what has been written about me, but to comment on what is happening now. ...

His phone call with Giamatti. However, he seems strangely fascinated by the dealings of high-tech companies. You would think that would be more Franklin's bailiwick.

Via Bijan.

Mass Moments recounts H.L. Mencken's arrest on Boston Common on April 5, 1926, because his American Mercury magazine ran a story about a prostitute that offended Boston's Watch and Ward Society:

... When the Watch and Ward Society immediately banned the issue as obscene, Mencken boarded a train for Boston. Once in the city, he orchestrated a meeting with John Chase, the Society's director, at the "Brimstone Corner" on Boston Common. With police, press, and a rowdy crowd of students on hand, Mencken offered Chase a copy of the magazine. Chase gave him a half-dollar piece (which Mencken bit for effect). Within minutes, the Boston vice squad placed H.L. Mencken under arrest. ...

H/T: Boston Metblogs.