![]() In a less politically sensitive time, Korean Americans were precluded from participating during the Korean War. There were marathons during both world wars. ![]() It is the oldest marathon in the Country and among the most difficult. The day is a state holiday and includes a home day game for the Boston Red Sox and the running of the Boston Marathon. They protested the growing presence of the British army and the raising of taxes by a Parliament in which they were not represented. Faneuil Hall came to symbolize Boston’s “Cradle of Civilization.” In the years just prior to the Revolution, it had become a gathering place for those known as patriots. That attack occurred on Patriot’s Day, a day that commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution, at Concord and Lexington on April 19 th, 1775. They would have been shocked, but not surprised by the horrific events in Boston on Monday. Self reliance and independence were characteristics they highly valued. They considered themselves unquestionably civilized. They were idealists who believed in the inherent goodness of people and nature, but that society and its institutions (especially political parties) ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. It included notables like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, John Muir, William Ellery Channing, Amos Bronson Alcott and his more famous daughter Louisa May. The belief in a “Cradle of Civilization” lay behind the Transcendentalists, a group that was formed in the 1830s. There are more than 40 museums, perhaps the most famous being the former home of Isabella Stewart Gardner. The Boston Symphony and Boston Pops are world renowned. The greater Boston area is home to the nation’s oldest university, Harvard, and to more than 100 other universities. The designation smacked of being supercilious, but was not unsurprising. Five thousand years later, Bostonians, in the years following the American Revolution, looked upon themselves as the new world’s “Cradle of Civilization.” While it was home to the first written records, it is an area that has seen tremendous violence over the years. It extends into the Kurdish region of Iraq and toward Baghdad. “As all schoolchildren know, the “Cradle of Civilization refers to Mesopotamia, a region centered around the city of Harput in eastern Turkey, in that Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
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