(no subject)
I don't really want to post about the Boston Marathon bombing, but I feel like I have to in order to proceed.
Much has been written in the past two weeks about the Marathon and what it means to Bostonians. It's a hard thing to explain. The Marathon is more than a sporting event, and more than a holiday. I just wrote two more paragraphs trying to explain it and deleted them in frustration. Let's just say that the marathon holds a special place in the heart of every Bostonian, and so to strike at its finish line is to hit the core of what we love about our city. So that was ugly and painful, even before you consider the lives lost and the lives forever changed by loss of limb and so forth.
This is a personal blog, so here's how my experience of it went: Since it is a holiday, Patriots Day, we didn't have school or work, so we went in the morning to our local Patriots Day event at the park a few blocks from our home. People dress up in quasi-Colonial outfits and show kids how to play games that (supposedly) kids played in Paul Revere's day. The mayor of our town wears a tricorne and gives a speech about appreciating our history or whatever. Then a guy dressed like Paul Revere rides a horse over to the park (this involves shutting down two major roads so a horse can go through) and waves to everyone and rides off along the route that the real Paul Revere rode.
So we did that, and then we went home and got our car and went over to my mom's house to hang out with her and with my friend Brian's baby, Noam, who is 7 months old and impossibly cute. We took Noam and my kids to the playground near mom's house, and that's where we were when I started getting texts and tweets from friends asking me if I was okay. I was able to see some of the news on twitter and get an idea of what was happening, although it was hard to get much detail and I was trying not to let the kids hear too much. But we basically just went on with our day, because what else can you do.
Then there were a few days of shell-shock and processing, and then...the crazy, surreal drama of the manhunt. I'm sure you've probably read about it by now and the news people have done a lot of work distilling the events of that Thursday and Friday down to a few paragraphs that almost make it sound orderly. Believe me, it was nothing of the sort. I was up until 2:30am that day, following the unfolding events via Twitter and police scanner. It was crazy, insane. It was chaos. At one point I started to see people in my town of Somerville tweeting that they had just heard several loud booms. In retrospect I now know that these were all people on the western side of town, closer to Watertown, and they were hearing the explosives that the suspects threw at cops during the chase and shootout; it's understandable that those booms were audible from western Somerville but not from east Somerville where I am. So we know that now, but at the time we couldn't know whether maybe all of Somerville was rigged up with bombs, or even full of crazed gun-toting terrorists. So that was freaky. In addition, at that time, it wasn't yet clear whether the people involved in a shootout with the police were the same people who had a) bombed the marathon and b) shot the MIT police officer (which happened a few short blocks from my office) and c) robbed the convenience store. We now know that the convenience-store robbery was unrelated but the other things were not; but at the time, for all we know, this could have been four DIFFERENT groups of insane heavily-armed maniacs roaming our city. So it was pretty tense.
I finally went to bed at 2:30, not because things had stopped happening, but because I was literally falling asleep in front of my computer. I woke up to find us on lockdown. Well, you've already read plenty about that too, I guess, so all I'll say about that is: contrary to what some are now saying in retrospect, it was not a "police state," we were not cowering in fear in our homes because The Man threatened us with nasty brown terrorists. *Eyeroll* Au contraire, we saw it as doing our part to help catch these guys. And see above where I wrote how special the marathon is: we ALL wanted them caught, asap.
The younger suspect, the one who is still alive, went to my high school. Teachers who taught me 20+ years ago taught him 2 years ago. This stuff is astounding and difficult to process.
But they did catch him, and we're all glad of that, and life in Boston goes on. Which means that people are still being jerks to each other ("Massholes") and cutting each other off in traffic and so forth. But people are also donating like crazy to the recovery funds. After the lockdown was lifted, people (including us) came out in force to patronize the businesses that had lost a day's worth of revenue because of the lockdown. After the bombing site was reopened, people did the same for the businesses along that street, which were hit even harder financially because they had to stay closed for more than a week.
All of the city buses now flash "Boston Strong" and "We Are One Boston" on their electronic displays, and it warms my heart to see it. Boston is a city with a lot of problems for sure, and while this thing has brought us together in many ways, it isn't like a magic wand has been waved that makes us suddenly all best of friends, or anything. But there is definitely a feeling of togetherness now.
Here is where I could say some cheesy shit about how we've learned to see the best in each other or whatever. I could quote that stupid Mister Rogers "look for the helpers" thing, which I was heartily sick of by about three hours after the bombs went off. But you've heard all that crap already so all I can say is...after all this, I love Boston more than ever. I think every day about the people who lost their sons (daughters, sisters, brothers, etc.) and the people who lost their legs. I think about the people (including three friends of mine) who, although they weren't injured, never got to finish the race they had trained so hard for. I think about the people who just happened to be there and saw terrible things they will never be able to un-see. I think about all of them, and I hope it helps them to know that the entire greater Boston area is in their corner. And I just hope that when next April rolls around, we can start trying to turn the Marathon back into what it used to be: as one blogger put it, "a 26-mile-long neighborhood block party" and a day of celebration and friendship and neighborliness. I want that back, and I know that all of Boston feels the same.
Much has been written in the past two weeks about the Marathon and what it means to Bostonians. It's a hard thing to explain. The Marathon is more than a sporting event, and more than a holiday. I just wrote two more paragraphs trying to explain it and deleted them in frustration. Let's just say that the marathon holds a special place in the heart of every Bostonian, and so to strike at its finish line is to hit the core of what we love about our city. So that was ugly and painful, even before you consider the lives lost and the lives forever changed by loss of limb and so forth.
This is a personal blog, so here's how my experience of it went: Since it is a holiday, Patriots Day, we didn't have school or work, so we went in the morning to our local Patriots Day event at the park a few blocks from our home. People dress up in quasi-Colonial outfits and show kids how to play games that (supposedly) kids played in Paul Revere's day. The mayor of our town wears a tricorne and gives a speech about appreciating our history or whatever. Then a guy dressed like Paul Revere rides a horse over to the park (this involves shutting down two major roads so a horse can go through) and waves to everyone and rides off along the route that the real Paul Revere rode.
So we did that, and then we went home and got our car and went over to my mom's house to hang out with her and with my friend Brian's baby, Noam, who is 7 months old and impossibly cute. We took Noam and my kids to the playground near mom's house, and that's where we were when I started getting texts and tweets from friends asking me if I was okay. I was able to see some of the news on twitter and get an idea of what was happening, although it was hard to get much detail and I was trying not to let the kids hear too much. But we basically just went on with our day, because what else can you do.
Then there were a few days of shell-shock and processing, and then...the crazy, surreal drama of the manhunt. I'm sure you've probably read about it by now and the news people have done a lot of work distilling the events of that Thursday and Friday down to a few paragraphs that almost make it sound orderly. Believe me, it was nothing of the sort. I was up until 2:30am that day, following the unfolding events via Twitter and police scanner. It was crazy, insane. It was chaos. At one point I started to see people in my town of Somerville tweeting that they had just heard several loud booms. In retrospect I now know that these were all people on the western side of town, closer to Watertown, and they were hearing the explosives that the suspects threw at cops during the chase and shootout; it's understandable that those booms were audible from western Somerville but not from east Somerville where I am. So we know that now, but at the time we couldn't know whether maybe all of Somerville was rigged up with bombs, or even full of crazed gun-toting terrorists. So that was freaky. In addition, at that time, it wasn't yet clear whether the people involved in a shootout with the police were the same people who had a) bombed the marathon and b) shot the MIT police officer (which happened a few short blocks from my office) and c) robbed the convenience store. We now know that the convenience-store robbery was unrelated but the other things were not; but at the time, for all we know, this could have been four DIFFERENT groups of insane heavily-armed maniacs roaming our city. So it was pretty tense.
I finally went to bed at 2:30, not because things had stopped happening, but because I was literally falling asleep in front of my computer. I woke up to find us on lockdown. Well, you've already read plenty about that too, I guess, so all I'll say about that is: contrary to what some are now saying in retrospect, it was not a "police state," we were not cowering in fear in our homes because The Man threatened us with nasty brown terrorists. *Eyeroll* Au contraire, we saw it as doing our part to help catch these guys. And see above where I wrote how special the marathon is: we ALL wanted them caught, asap.
The younger suspect, the one who is still alive, went to my high school. Teachers who taught me 20+ years ago taught him 2 years ago. This stuff is astounding and difficult to process.
But they did catch him, and we're all glad of that, and life in Boston goes on. Which means that people are still being jerks to each other ("Massholes") and cutting each other off in traffic and so forth. But people are also donating like crazy to the recovery funds. After the lockdown was lifted, people (including us) came out in force to patronize the businesses that had lost a day's worth of revenue because of the lockdown. After the bombing site was reopened, people did the same for the businesses along that street, which were hit even harder financially because they had to stay closed for more than a week.
All of the city buses now flash "Boston Strong" and "We Are One Boston" on their electronic displays, and it warms my heart to see it. Boston is a city with a lot of problems for sure, and while this thing has brought us together in many ways, it isn't like a magic wand has been waved that makes us suddenly all best of friends, or anything. But there is definitely a feeling of togetherness now.
Here is where I could say some cheesy shit about how we've learned to see the best in each other or whatever. I could quote that stupid Mister Rogers "look for the helpers" thing, which I was heartily sick of by about three hours after the bombs went off. But you've heard all that crap already so all I can say is...after all this, I love Boston more than ever. I think every day about the people who lost their sons (daughters, sisters, brothers, etc.) and the people who lost their legs. I think about the people (including three friends of mine) who, although they weren't injured, never got to finish the race they had trained so hard for. I think about the people who just happened to be there and saw terrible things they will never be able to un-see. I think about all of them, and I hope it helps them to know that the entire greater Boston area is in their corner. And I just hope that when next April rolls around, we can start trying to turn the Marathon back into what it used to be: as one blogger put it, "a 26-mile-long neighborhood block party" and a day of celebration and friendship and neighborliness. I want that back, and I know that all of Boston feels the same.