I remember that dreamlike candlelight. Like a dream that you can’t quite place. But Lin-Miranda, I’ll never forget the first time I saw your play.

https://soundcloud.com/939theriver-1/holy-sht-we-went-to-go-see-hamilton

So how did we get to this point? Singer-songwriter Erin McKeown (who is working on her own musical with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s co-conspirator) told me THREE years ago about her musical and about a hip-hop musical about a founding father. It sounded slightly dumb but interesting and I mostly forgot about. Then in Novemeber of 2015, while she joined me on my march for The Food Bank of Western Mass, Erin said “DON’T listen to Hamilton” and that she wanted to introduce it to me and my family.

So I waited. And waited. Until February of 2016 when the family of one, Judge John Hodgman, told The Belmontes about their family’s obsession with Hamilton and that we might want to consider getting obsessed, too. By the end of February we were all horribly addicted. So much so that we performed a song from it at The Cancer Connection Campout X.

And then Monte and Erin did an event at The Shea talking about her musical, and Hamilton and it definitely did not include a Hamilton sing-a-long (because, turns out, that would be illegal). After that show, an extremely generous person said “Monte, you do a lot of good in the community and I basically don’t do anything. But one thing I can do is get you Hamilton tickets.” Now, I thought it was a long-shot, but knowing this person, I thought “maybe…”. The next morning she was asking which dates we couldn’t go and by later that week, we had tickets. She wishes to remain anonymous, but she made our dream come true and Professora Belmonte and I will never really be able to thank her enough. But she made our dream come true and I probably shouldn’t brag, but dag she amazes and astonishes.