america the beautiful
Reen and I just got back from church. To close the service we sang Hymn number 440 entitled "O beautiful for spacious skies", which we know better as America the Beautiful. It just so happens that the church we were in used to be overseen by a Pastor Bates who had 5 children, the youngest of which was named Katherine. This girl Katherine, who may have one day sat in the very pew that Reen and I occupied this morning, would leave Falmouth and go on to Wellesley College. In 1893 Miss Bates, who was lecturing a summer session at Colorado College, joined an expedition to the summit of Pikes Peak in a prairie wagon. She wrote in her notebook, "It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse..." that she scribbled down into her notebook the 4 stanzas that would become adopted as our country's second national anthem, which we were now singing. It was kind of neat to be standing in that church, singing that song on the weekend when we are celebrating our nation's independence. Happy 4th of July everybody!