Pete Seeger, proud American, rest in peace

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, US vs UK

One of the most iconic, brave, and influential Americans died on Monday, January 27th, 2014, at the age of 94.

Pete Seeger was the voice of the Viet Nam war protests, the unions, the disenfranchised, the poor. His songs, “We Will Overcome,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” are the American soundtrack of most of the last century.

As The Nation said about him:

“Seeger was a much-acclaimed and innovative guitarist and banjoist, a globe-trotting song collector, and the author of many songbooks and musical how-to manuals. In addition to being a World War II veteran, he was on the front lines of every key progressive crusade during his lifetime—labor unions and migrant workers in the 1930s and 1940s, the banning of nuclear weapons and opposition to the Cold War in the 1950s, civil rights and the anti–Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, environmental responsibility and opposition to South African apartheid in the 1970s, and, always, human rights throughout the world.”

As Pete Seeger himself said at the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee of the early 1950s, when the lives of so many talented artists, writers, directors, actors, politicians, and gay people were ruined by the Communist red-baiting of Senator Joe McCarthy:

Mr. SEEGER: “I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.”

With thanks to Diana Spiegel, Town Meeting Member of Brookline, Massachusetts, who brought these links to my attention, here is more information on Pete Seeger:

The Nation magazine: “Pete Seeger brought the world together”

http://www.thenation.com/article/178123/pete-seeger-brought-world-together

8 songs to remember Pete by

http://theweek.com/article/index/255630/8-songs-to-remember-pete-seeger-by

Now on PBS: “Pete Seeger, The Power of Song”

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/pete-seeger/full-film-pete-seeger-the-power-of-song/2864/

Pete Seeger’s testimony before HUAC at the hearings held by Senator Joe McCarthy (known as “The McCarthy Hearings”)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/28/1273074/-Testimony-of-Pete-Seeger-before-the-House-Un-American-Activities-Committee-August-18-1955#

Nov 14, 2013: The last show of his life, a benefit for WBAI NYC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOzEGONBQxc

The Colbert Report, August 6, 2012

https://showyou.com/v/h-B4DrlbzmSg2LFr4X/pete-seeger-quite-early-morning

Pete, thanks for the 94 years of songs and political action that you gave us. America is a much better, kinder, and more compassionate country because of you.

To frappe or not to frappe: What’s your (American) dialect?

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, US vs UK

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American dialects, Harvard Dialect Survey, US dialects

My results from the dialect map

When I moved from Manhattan to Boston, I no longer took my clothes to the dry cleaners. In Boston, they were “cleansers.” I couldn’t order a milk shake; they were “frappes,” (and way too watery). And when it came to using the word “very,” fuhgeddaboudit! Here in Boston, it’s “wicked,” as in “wicked good” or “wicked pissa.”

To people overseas, America might at times seem like one big, homogeneous country with one culture, language, and dialect (or maybe two languages, English and Spanish, or the combination, Spanglish), but that’s far from true.

People around the US all eat take-out sandwiches, but depending on where they live, they order subs, grinders, hoagies, heroes, po’ boys, bombers, Italian sandwiches, baguettes, or sarneys.

When Americans drive around traffic islands, they call them variously roundabouts, rotaries, circles, traffic circles, or traffic circuses.

And, although I knew about “package stores” where you can get cheap, untaxed booze, I’d never heard of drive-through liquor stores, called “brew thrus,” “party barns,” “bootleggers,” “beer barns,” or “beverage barns.”

There’s a really cool test constructed by the Harvard Dialect Survey, a linguistics project begun in 2002 by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, to help “place” you within the US, based on the words you use and the way in which you pronounce them. I’ve tested it on myself, and on several friends, and it was remarkably accurate.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=1&

And, if you want to see where in the world people with your last name live, go check out this post.

One-year anniversary: Newtown, Connecticut

14 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston

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anniversary of Newtown school shooting, Newtown school shooting, Sandy Hook

Bryan Thomas for the New York Times

There is a pervasive sadness over this day, which has been come to be known as 12/14.

This is a day when, in Newtown, Connecticut, one year ago, 20 young children and 6 of their teachers and administrators were murdered by a deranged young man who had retreated to the four walls of his bedroom, covered his windows with black garbage bags, played violent video games–and despite this, his mother bought him guns and had already written out a check for a new gun for Christmas.

According to a recently released police report, on the morning of 12/14/2012, this young man played a computer game called “School Shooting,” then picked up several real guns, shot his mother to death, and then went to a nearby school and killed twenty children and six teachers and administrators and changed the lives of their families forever.

Whenever there is a school shooting, as there was yesterday in Colorado, people always say, I always thought it couldn’t happen here. But it does, and parents live with the knowledge that it is not impossible that our own children could be the victims of gun violence in a country where guns are so prevalent and virtually nothing is done to keep guns away from criminals and severely mentally ill people.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There are very few mass shootings in Europe, and when there are, as at Dunblane, Scotland, and on a Norwegian island and in Oslo, things changed afterwards. After Dunblane, the British government outlawed handguns throughout the UK. After the slayings in Norway, where handgun laws are already extremely strict and the nationalized health system makes mental illness more easily treated, the Norwegian government has made it even more difficult to acquire handguns by raising the minimum age.

After Newtown, the opposite has happened on the state level. As reported in the New York Times, new state gun laws have mostly eased restrictions and expanded the rights of gun owners:

“About 1,500 state gun bills have been introduced since the Newtown massacre.
“178 passed at least one chamber of a state legislature. 109 have become law.

“In the 12 months since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., almost every state has enacted at least one new gun law. Nearly two-thirds of the new laws ease restrictions and expand the rights of gun owners. Most of those bills were approved in states controlled by Republicans.

“39 new laws tighten gun restrictions

“70 new laws loosen gun restrictions”

It would be wonderful not to have any anniversaries like today, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen anytime in the future, as long as guns proliferate and criminals and clearly deranged people have easy access to them.

The publication of A Pennine Childhood by Brenda Wallis Smith!

07 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in US vs UK

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A Pennine Childhood, Brenda Wallis Smith

Dear Readers of The Year of Living Englishly,

I am absolutely delighted to announce the publication of the memoir and e-book, A Pennine Childhood, written by my mother, Brenda Wallis Smith!

In this captivating, beautifully written memoir of a childhood spent in Derbyshire’s Peak District, my mother provides a fascinating account of her childhood in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s when local farmers ploughed with horses, miners walked home in the evenings with faces blackened with coal dust and, during the war, fields and haystacks were strafed by the Luftwaffe on their way home to Germany and the village postman took to announcing, ‘’E’s cummin’ ’ome, me darlin’, ’e’s cummin’ ’ome!’

My mother draws a vivid picture of the Derbyshire countryside and the Derwent Valley, with its rich history that included Sir Richard Arkwright, Florence Nightingale, and Alison Uttley. It is here that her maternal grandfather and uncles worked in Matlock’s spas, on farms, and in local quarries, and her grandmother worked scrubbing the floors of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Matlock. Her paternal grandfather, John Bent Wallis, the son of a gardener, became, against all odds, an accomplished painter and the daily nature columnist for the Sheffield Telegraph. In A Pennine Childhood, the English countryside and its people come vividly to life.

You may notice that the cover of the book is the painting done by my great-grandfather, her grandfather, John Bent Wallis, of the Derwent Valley about which I have written in this blog. (The little figure of a young child is my mother’s father). And, as you will see, she is a far better writer than I, and a wonderful observer of daily life.

As they say in Derbyshire, I’m dead chuffed (really, really proud)! I hope you will read the book, or listen to the e-book!

To order the book in the US: http://www.amazon.com/Pennine-Childhood-Brenda-Wallis-Smith/dp/1484195671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386440623&sr=8-1&keywords=a+pennine+childhood

To order the e-book in the US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H52GD9I

To order the book in the UK:

If you’re in Derbyshire, go to: Scarthin’s in Cromford, The Loaf Cafe in Crich, Bridge Gifts in Matlock (right by Crown Square and the bridge over the Derwent), Worth Books in Belper (top of King’s Parade), and Cromford Mills Gifts and Bookshop at Cromford Mills, Cromford.

Otherwise in the UK, you can order the book through Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pennine-Childhood-Brenda-Wallis-Smith/dp/1484195671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386443723&sr=8-1&keywords=a+pennine+childhood

To order the e-book in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Pennine-Childhood-Brenda-Smith-ebook/dp/B00H52GD9I/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1386443723&sr=8-1

In memory of President John F. Kennedy, 50 years later

22 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, US vs UK

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50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK; John F. Kennedy; November 22, assassination of President Kennedy, JFK, November 22 1963, November 22 2013, President John F. Kennedy

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on”–John F. Kennedy

All along Harvard Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, the home of President John F. Kennedy, there are banners proclaiming some of his thought-provoking words.

“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind”–John F. Kennedy

It is the 50th anniversary of his assassination, one of those moments of the last century, along with Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 and Bobby Kennedy on June 6, 1968; the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986; and in this century the bombings of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane crash in a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, that will, for Americans, “live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt said about Pearl Harbor.

All countries have these dates: for the UK in the last century they include the horrific battles of World Wars I and II; the death of King George VI in 1952; the Hyde Park and Regent’s Park IRA bombings on July 20, 1982: and in this century, the bombing of the three London tube trains and a double-decker bus by terrorists on 7/7/2005.

There are times when the fabric of a nation is torn, and can never be mended; when there is a distinct “before” and “after,” after which things are never the same.

The murder of JFK was one of these life-changing events.

I was a young child when JFK was president, and I still remember very clearly how bright life seemed when he was alive, and how desperately terrible life became after he was assassinated.

And now it’s the 50th anniversary.

The Boston Globe did a wonderful piece today on the lasting effects of November 22, 1963 including this photograph of people gathering at President Kennedy’s birthplace on Beal Street, Brookline, Mass.

Brookline's Beal Street, courtesy Boston Globe

Brookline’s Beal Street after JFK’s assassination, courtesy Boston Globe

This is what Beal Street looks like today; only I and a couple other people were out photographing, but reminders of that day were everywhere–in newspapers, on TV, and on social media.

Beal Street, Brookline, Massachusetts, November 22, 2013

Pictured below is the house where JFK was born and lived as a young boy. According to the Boston Globe, JFK and some of his siblings were born on a twin bed near the window in a room on the second floor, so the doctor could benefit from the light.

JFK’s boyhood home on Beal Street

The house is now owned by the National Park Service. JFK’s mother, the formidable Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, has decorated it as it was when her children were young. Her recorded voice provides commentary as you go from room to room and marvel at how they fit so many people into that house. Today the American flag is at half-mast and there are flowers on the memorial to JFK.

Memorial to JFK at his boyhood home on Beal Street

JFK and his family used to worship at St Aidan’s Church, about six blocks away. It has now been turned into condos, but still, the exterior remains, as do the magnificent beech trees (not pictured, but to the right of the church) that were there when JFK was a boy.

St Aidan’s Church where JFK worshipped as a boy.

This day, 50 years ago, is one that those days that Americans who lived through it will never forget, and that shaped an entire generation. Here are some of the most memorable images from that time:

Walter Cronkite of CBS News announcing the death of President Kennedy.

President Kennedy’s funeral narrated by Walter Cronkite.

President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

President Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr Martin Luther King were shining examples of the very best of America, and it is this we should remember, rather than the fact that they were taken from us far too soon. America has changed a lot in the past 50 years, for both good and bad, but some of the good is due to the work of these three men who tried to create a better, more equal, and compassionate country.

What for you were the national events that made you feel that things would never again be the same?

In for a penny, in for a pound: the proverbs we live by

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in US vs UK

≈ 10 Comments

Justin, the father of Julia, my 10-year-old daughter’s best friend, has just called, looking for his daughter.

Julia and my daughter Meg have just spent the night with Mame-Diarra, the other friend in the triad that was formed in kindergarten, and now all three are at my house.

Justin asked me when I wanted him to pick up Julia, and I told him that Mame-Diarra was staying until 6 p.m. the next day, so it was “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Meaning that as long as Meg had one friend here, she might as well have two, and so Julia was welcome to stay with us until 6 tomorrow night, 26 hours from now.

He said he’d be by shortly to pick her up, at which point I realized that he hadn’t the slightest idea what I meant in using this oh-so-very-English proverb of “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Which got me to thinking about English proverbs.

I clicked on a link to English proverbs and read through them, making a list of the ones I’d heard most frequently in my family, most often from my mother and my two grandmothers:

A watched pot never boils (probably said often in a nation of tea-drinkers)

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t

Cold hands, warm heart

Curiosity killed the cat

Discretion is the better part of valour

Don’t cry over spilt milk

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs

Good things come to those who wait

Great minds think alike

It takes all sorts

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good

Laughter is the best medicine

Make hay while the sun shines

Many hands make light work

Money doesn’t grow on trees

No rest for the weary

My mother’s favorite, which isn’t on this list, is: “All things must pass,” and my dad’s favorites are, “Where there’s muck there’s money” (he was a farmer’s boy) and, “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.”

Another proverb (or perhaps “saying” might be a better word for it) said often in families like mine from the north of England is, “There’s now’t so queer as folk,” meaning, there’s nothing so strange as people.

The only possible response to this statement is, “Except more folk.”

Clearly, “It takes all sorts!”

***

Benjamin Franklin was probably the most productive collector and producer of proverbs in the United States, ranging from “He that lives upon hope will die fasting” to “You can bear your own faults and why not a fault in your wife?” Take a look at all the wisdom in Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Do you and/or your family have any favorite proverbs?

Here are some proverbs from around the world: the American South, Italy, Africa, France, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, China, and Russia.

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22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Crich and the farms, Family history, US vs UK

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Genealogy; surnames, world family names

I have just come across a really cool website that I want to tell you about.

It’s called “World Family Names,” at http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org and it shows the frequency of surnames in 26 countries around the world in relation to the overall population.

The countries are: US, UK, Canada, Japan, India, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

The maps use data for approximately 300 million people in 26 countries of the world, representing a total population of 1 billion people in those countries. There are 8 million unique surnames in this database.

Plug in your own surname, or surnames of family members and/or friends, and you will see where people with this surname live around the world, in greater or lesser numbers. (I tried first with names of friends, including Ngom (a Senegalese name), Kaplansky, Lofstrom, Quint, Kovacs, and Zimman, and got interesting results).

I also tried my last name, Smith, one of the commonest last names in the English-speaking world.

Not surprisingly, the bluest of the blue areas shows that there are many “Smith”s as a percentage of the overall population in the UK and also in Australia, where many people of British ancestry–including members of my own family–live. The US and Canada weighs in after that, not surprising when you figure that both these countries were originally colonized by the British (along with, of course, the Native Americans, who were there first, and the Spaniards and the French.)

Then I checked to see where in the UK the greatest concentration of Smiths are:

Gratifyingly, the greatest number of “Smith”s are right where I’d expect them to be, in the Midlands, which encompasses Derbyshire, my parents’ home county, and which would include members of my immediate family, a number who are farmers and so are not at all mobile and at least two generations ago tended to have very large families to help with all the work on the farm.

But now take a look at my mother’s family, surname Wallis:

I know that there are relatively few Wallises in the world, save for a long-ago Wallis who was a famous mathematician, another who circumnavigated the globe, and one American charismatic Christian called Jim all of whom, as far as I know, are no relation to us.

I wanted to see where the Wallises lived in the UK, and if there was a clumping in Derbyshire, where my mother was born, but I found that there are relatively few Wallises in Derbyshire; most of them are grouped on the east and south coasts of England.

The fact that there’s a clumping in the south and east of England makes sense, if you know that those Wallises (those who were not originally “Wallace”s which is a completely different name) are most likely to have been French people of the name “De Walys” who came over to England in the Norman Conquest in 1066, and who probably remained in the part of England closest to France.

Now, plug in your family surname(s), and see where it takes you!

The suckiness of having to model good behavior to your kids

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, How we're coming along, Humor/humour, Parenting

≈ 2 Comments

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air conditioning, heat, hot temperatures, Modeling good behavior to kids

This is not me, but you get the picture.

OK, this is what it was like here in Boston, Mass, over the last weekend. It’s been bleeping hot, and because I have English genes I really, really don’t do well in the heat. It’s 93 in the shade, and all anyone in my household is doing is sweating.

We don’t have any AC going on because it’s been a really long, cold spring and the ACs are all tucked away in their little winter home in the laundry room, and those of us who have the time to get them into the windows have dodgy or scrawny backs (i.e., my mother, me, and my 10-year-old), and those of us who have the back strength don’t have the time (The Other Responsible Adult In The House, abbreviated as TORAITH) or the inclination (my two teenagers). So everyone in my house is sweating and miserable.

On Sunday, after three horrendous days of steamy heat, I had the chance to go see a movie with friends. This was a highly acclaimed movie that combined two of my favorite things: 1) it had a literary premise so I could feel virtuous about spending my money, and 2) it was set in New York City, a place I adore. But more importantly, it was a movie with . . . sigh . . . air conditioning, because going to a movie in the summer in America is really all about the air conditioning.

But before I headed out for the movie, I had to take my 18-year-old daughter to the AT&T store to get her a new iPhone 5, which is part graduation present and part replacing her old iPhone 4 which she recently dropped.

In purchasing the new phone, I had to provide ID, which meant showing my driver’s license to the store employee. Which is the point at which he told me that it had expired. On my birthday. And before you start Facebooking me to wish me Happy Birthday, I have to tell you that my birthday was in February, so I’ve been driving illegally for four months.

This situation was made far worse because my 18-year-old is on the brink of getting her driver’s license at the same time that her mother has been driving on an expired license. Not exactly good modeling behavior on my part.

So I slunk home and had TORAITH take over for me at the AT&T store with an up-to-date driver’s license.

I immediately got online and filled in the form for the Registry of Motor Vehicles, hoping that I could get something saying that I could legally drive to the movie an hour-and-a-half hence. After I answered some questions, the form told me that because I had no felonies, misdemeanors, unpaid parking tickets, or moving violations, and because I was just such a generally wonderful person, I could apply online instead of having to actually go to an RMV office. All I’d have to do was print out my online preliminary new driver’s license and I’d be on my way to the movie and its air conditioned comfort.

But then, my payment using my credit card didn’t go through. Then the second card didn’t go through. By this time, TORAITH had returned home, so I used her credit card. Then that one didn’t go through though it had worked satisfactorily at the AT&T store just half an hour earlier.

So here I was, with a statement from the RMV saying that I was eligible to get my new driver’s license online, but my payment had been refused on three credit cards that I knew to be completely okay. So I figured out that the RMV’s payment system must be on the blink. But I was still okay, wasn’t I? They said I was eligible, so that must mean legal, right?

I could almost feel the cool air of the movie theatre wafting over me and the hairs on my arms lifting in the cool cool breeze.

And, as the friends I was going to meet asked me: What are the chances I’d get into an accident driving to and from the movie, when I’d never had an accident in my entire driving experience?

The answer: none. Or almost none. And I had the print-out saying I was eligible to renew online which had to count for something.

“Just go!” chimed in my soon-to-be-licensed driver who’s heard multiple lectures from me about the need for insurance and obeying the rules of the road. “It’s their mistake that their website won’t take your card.”

Well, yeeeeeeessssssss. But . . .

So: should I stay or should I go?

There are so, so many things I’ve given up since having my three kids, and here I’m not just talking about sleep, money, and sanity. I’m talking about all those things I did to model good behavior to my kids.

o PK (pre-kids), the words “f*** a duck” used to roll off my tongue for major and minor pains and disappointments and believe me, it helped whatever pain I was feeling.

No more. AK–after kids–I became so good at not swearing that I’d managed to convince my two older kids up until they were 8 and 10 that the “F” word was “fart” and the “S” word was “shut up.”

o When I went out PK, I used to have several drinks over the course of an evening.

Now, I never have more than one beer or glass of wine, and that’s over the course of several days or even a week or else my kids start telling me that I’m an alcoholic.

o When I needed a good old pity party PK, I’d run a hot bath and sink into it with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge ice cream and People magazine, preferably with (insert a sigh of longing here) Brad Pitt on the cover.

o And I never, ever, ate broccoli PK.

Now, AK, those little green “trees” as I’ve learned to call them, frequently pass my lips although I find them as disgusting as I did before having kids.

Yuck! Steamed broccoli!

But in terms of this movie: I’ve already given up so much. Can’t I just have this one thing–a really great movie in air-conditioned, ice-cold comfort?

The opening credits were starting in 45 minutes, and I had a 30-minute-drive to get there. I had to go.

But then my daughter said, “Who cares about their stupid rules, anyway?”

Clearly, this thing of modeling good behavior hasn’t worked out as well as I would have liked. But I can’t give up modeling good behavior now, in front of this about-to-be-newly-minted driver.

I called my friends and told them that I couldn’t go. Waves of disappointment spread over my hot, sweaty body as I thought of the hours ahead in our steamy house.

This modeling good behavior, although a useful thing, was for the birds.

And I couldn’t even say, “f*** a duck”!

What pleasures of your life have you given up in order to model “good behavior” to your kids?

Boston Marathon memorial: Bucket brigade of flowers

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, How we're coming along

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Boston Marathon bombing, Boston Marathon bombing memorial

On Sunday afternoon I went down to the memorial to those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing.

I’ve been feeling completely shattered ever since it happened last Monday afternoon, over a week ago. It’s exactly the same feeling that I had in 1993 when I looked out of my office window down Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and saw the smoke rising behind the Pan Am building from the first attack on the World Trade Center, and then eight years later when New York was attacked a second time on 9/11/2001 which I wrote about in “New York, a Love Story.”

Sunday was a lovely spring day here in Boston, sunny, in the 50s, with daffodils, cherry trees, and magnolias in full bloom. I went down on the T to Arlington Street, one stop past Copley, which was still closed due to the bombing, and walked the several blocks towards the finish line.

Six blocks of Boylston Street were shut off with metal barricades. At both ends were memorials to the three–now four, with the murder of the MIT policeman–people dead and 260 people injured, some horrifically.

There was a real mix of people at the memorial, probably about half native Bostonians, half foreign tourists, judging by the accents. All was quiet except for a man who stood at the front of the barricade laughing loudly as he talked on his cell phone. After a few minutes of hoping he would realize how hurtful his behavior was, I finally said to him, “Please don’t laugh. People have died here.” He muttered “sorry” and slunk away, cell phone in hand.

The memorial was filled with bouquets of flowers of all sorts, three large white crosses for the three victims of the bombing, running shoes, Boston Marathon medals and t-shirts, posters, signs, and American flags. A man who appeared to be a Vietnam vet was managing the memorial, taking flowers from bystanders and putting them in place.

Taking bouquets at the memorial.

At one point he called out, “I need volunteers!”

I raised my hand, and about fifteen other people joined in. I had no idea what he wanted us to do, but doing something–anything–was better than doing nothing at all except feeling this overwhelming sense of sadness.

Men in hazmat suits on Boylston Street near the finish line.

The guys in the hazmat suits had told him that they needed to remove the barricades and clear the street for traffic soon, and so he needed our help moving the memorial to a semicircle of pavement about 25 feet to the left.

We started with the flowers. A line formed of about ten people passing individual bouquets of flowers along like a bucket brigade. It was beautifully choreographed and very moving, but I’m not my father’s daughter for nothing, and he always liked getting things done the most efficient way possible, so I scooped up bouquet after bouquet of flowers, probably two dozen, in my arms and carried them to the new memorial site, then repeated the process many times over the next hour.

The new memorial took shape, all the flowers at the back, a section for baseball caps, one for t-shirts, another for posters. The three white crosses for the two women and the little boy who were killed in the bombing were moved, then surrounded by multitudes of stuffed animals.

Remembrances for the two women and young boy, and the MIT police officer.

The MIT policeman didn’t have a cross, but someone had put his initial, “S” for “Sean,” next to the initials “M” for Martin, the 8-year-old boy, “L” for Lingsi, the Chinese graduate student, and “K” for Krystle, the exuberant restaurant worker.

After all the emotion, I was drained. I thought about walking the two miles home along the route of the Marathon, but instead I wove a circuitous path in the opposite direction to the Public Garden, probably the loveliest spot in Boston with its willows, landscaped vistas, and Swan boats.

The Boston Public Garden. A swan boat is going under the bridge.

I walked through Back Bay to the bridge leading to the Esplanade next to the Charles River. On the other side of the river was Cambridge, where the MIT policeman was murdered and the terrorists lived. I cut back into town at Kenmore Square with its iconic neon CITGO sign (see below) and nearby Fenway Park where the Red Sox play. There was a game going on, and hordes of people on the street.

In Kenmore Square I came across an advertisement from the sneaker company New Balance which used the words that Paul Revere supposedly said as he rode on horseback to warn citizens between Boston and Concord: “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

Boston MBTA bus after the Marathon bombing. Copyright Virginia A Smith

Even the buses are carrying the message as Bostonians are fighting back against the assault to our people and our city.

Boston on lockdown

19 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Back in Boston, How we're coming along

≈ 2 Comments

Boston under lockdown

It’s really eerie here in Boston.

Since the older terrorist in the Boston Marathon bombing was killed in the small hours of the night and his younger brother went on the loose and is now the subject of a city-wide search, Boston has been on lockdown. All forms of public transportation have been shut down, including the “T” (the Boston trains and buses) and Amtrak, businesses are closed, and people have been told to stay indoors.

Katie, my 18-year-old daughter, and I were in Western Massachusetts for the past 24 hours, attending an Open House at a college to which she was accepted when the two suspects were located and the older one killed. Hearing about Boston being on lockdown this morning was just surreal. We had planned to spend the entire day at the college, but instead we headed out almost immediately. When we arrived back home, there were lots of hugs from my mother and my 10-year-old daughter.

When we left Boston yesterday for our trip, we drove through Watertown, where the shoot-out took place. It is now closed off, so we had to take a route to the south of Boston, rather than driving in directly from the west.

The Massachusetts turnpike (the "Mass Pike") near where the Marathon started on Monday morning.

On the Massachusetts turnpike (the “Mass Pike”, also known as I90) near where the Marathon started on Monday morning.

In Hopkinton, the town where the Marathon started 26.2 miles from the finish line in downtown Boston, there was virtually no traffic going into Boston.

There was even less traffic on Route 9, the major thoroughfare to our part of town and to downtown Boston. Traffic is always fierce on Route 9, but not today.

No traffic is coming out of Boston. Everything is shut down.

Yesterday morning, right before we left for the college’s open house, Katie went to the Church of the Holy Cross where the memorial service for the victims of the Boston Marathon bomb explosions was taking place. She was hoping to get into the church and see President Obama speak not only as Commander-in-Chief but in his new role as “Comforter-in-Chief.”

She was number 1,050 in line, but unfortunately they only let in the first 1,000 people. While she was waiting, she took this photo which captures four major aspects of the past three days:

1. The Boston police who worked selflessly to protect the city. Here they are protecting people attending the memorial service.

2. The medical personnel from Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in the van who, along with doctors and nurses at Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s, Boston Medical Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital, helped save the lives of countless people.

3. The American flag at half-mast

4. The Prudential Center, Boston’s second tallest building, which was a block or two away from the Marathon finish line.

Photo taken by Katie.

She missed seeing President Obama speak in person, but those of us in Boston or involved in the Marathon have his words of comfort to listen to as many times as we need to hear them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vguxffX1ftg