Monday, July 23, 2018

John Adams Six Degrees (or more) of Separation

For a lot of reasons I like John Adams. He was from Massachusetts - my birthplace, an historically prominent figure of history, a very “straight talker” oftentimes to his detriment, and most importantly had a lovely relationship with Abigail. I think I have read just about every book written about them and have visited their home in Quincy. I saw the musical play 1776 at least twice, watched the movie many times more, and still have a few songs from the soundtrack on my playlist. William Daniels played a great John Adams. A couple of weeks ago we took a cheesy tourist trip to visit Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and the only president I wanted a picture with was Mr. Adams. Since we started with Amazon Prime last month we are watching mostly British programming. But I found the HBO television series about John Adams from 2007 or so that we weren’t able to see, so we started to watch it this week. So far I don’t think it’s that hot, but a lot of the dialogue is similar to the play 1776 because it’s based on John Adams letters - literally. So it was interesting to find out a bit of trivia the other day when my sister was telling us a story about working at the Catholic University library many years ago. Someone came in looking for information about the Adams family. My sister, who majored in history, felt something striking about this individual - the general appearance and size, etc. - and asked if he was related to John Adams. And he was a descendant. So, you could say I am now connected to John Adams by three degrees - me, my sister, the descendant, and the real thing. Yes, I know there are several people in between the descendant and the real thing, but it’s a great connection! I’ve always thought if you talk to someone long enough you will find something of interest. You just need to look for it. 




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