Barb’s Burblings

It’s my tradition on the 4th of July to watch 1776. I first saw it in music class in 4th grade, and if the Elizabeth George Speare books hadn’t turned me into a devotee of that time period, that movie did it. (Plus, they said “ass”! Scandalous!) I became enamoured of the colonial and Revolutionary periods of history, and though I’m not involved with it in my day-to-day life, I did wind up majoring in history. I wrote my history thesis on slavery and the Constitution, but really, it was because of the climax of the movie–starting at about two minutes in this clip:

I quoted this in my thesis. Probably my favorite moment of the entire thing is at 8:25 in that–John Adams’s reaction.

Also insanely good is his song near the end of the show:

It kind of boggles my mind that so many people think of Mr. Feeny when they see William Daniels. He’ll always be John Adams to me. And I’m sure he’ll never know how much of an impact he had on my life because of this role.