I am the A-L-E-X-A-N-D E-R We Are Meant to Be

Oh, man. If I told you how much we spent to see HAMILTON on Broadway, you'd think we were pretty extravagant and that our kids must not be college-bound, so please do remind us, when our kids are shacked up in our basement ten years from now and still working for minimum wage that this was so worth it.

We packed our two days in NYC, joined by dear friends from way back in graduate school, which meant it was a trip full of highlights. And seeing HAMILTON was the highlight of the highlight reel. That's how awesome it was.

 Lit Night is just a month away! In case you don't plan on draining your 401k to get back to New York before then, there's still time to listen to the soundtrack, watch some YouTube videos, and even plow through the Ron Chernow biography, a Mount Everest of biographies you will feel duly triumphant over when you reach the last page.

We paid a visit to Trinity Church near the New York Stock Exchange the afternoon of the show, and while I neglected to find Hamilton's grave because we were on the wrong side of the churchyard, I did chance upon this marker for Angelica Schuyler!

Work!

BTW, if you ever want your tombstone to last more than three hundred years, I recommend you pony up for the deep engraving and don't cheap out on the kind of stone that sloughs off, as many of the buried did. Sadly, the main part of the church building was locked, so we could only stroll outside and down the street, where, at "Federal Hall" a statue of Washington marks the spot where he was inaugurated.

As for the show, we were bummed to miss many of the original cast members but happy to report that the new Angelica and new Aaron Burr are fabulous, and our musician friends called the show "well-produced" with "tight" music and effects. Neither of them had read the book or listened to the soundtrack ahead of time, and they still followed it, loved it and wished their kids could see it too.

One unexpectedly poignant moment came when George Washington was singing about leaving office after two terms and going home to Mount Vernon, saying of the new nation, "The scripture says they will sit under their own vine and their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid." Well, we had just come from spending the afternoon at the 9/11 Museum at the World Trade Center, where Americans were pretty much sitting under their own vine and fig tree, and, on that day, we had been made very afraid indeed. (Excellent, if emotionally exhausting museum. I highly recommend.)

Wonderful country we live in. Can't wait for this musical to become so old-hat that every high school can mount a production and we can all catch it any time. In the meantime, my kids got t-shirts and a HAMILTON cup. It's not a college education, but hey.