I took this photo in October 2008, while staying just
outside Boston. The afternoon light was waning fast when I came to the town green at Lexington, but I wanted
to maximize my photos, as I wasn’t sure how many more opportunities I would
have at this point in my trip to catch this sight.
Naturally, I would have preferred to have shot this
when light was more abundant so the facial features would be more apparent. But
in another sense, I like it as is. The essence of the Minute Man, after all,
was vigilance, at all hours of the day or night.
In fact, twilight and beyond can be when dangers to liberty
can most readily occur, when they are least visibility and when concentration is
most relaxed.
This Minute Man statue stands at the intersection of Bedford Street and Massachusetts Avenue. It is commonly
called the “Lexington Minute Man” statue to distinguish it from the other one by Daniel Chester French in
nearby Concord—featuring on its base a stanza
from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” commemorating “the spot where the
embattled farmer stood.”
The Lexington Minute Man was created by the
English-born American sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson.
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