…Boston, you’re my home…

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April 15, 2013

That line (“Boston, you’re my home”), from the song “Dirty Water” by The Standells is on my mind tonight.

I grew up in New Hampshire (“the Shire” if you’re not from there & want to make an ‘annoying-to-decent’ joke). I know it’s not in Boston, or even Massachusetts, if you paid attention in geography class…or history.

Here’s the thing: It’s like when someone has a bunch of brothers & they fight with them all the time, but if someone fucks with one of their brothers…’there will be blood’, as somebody once said. If there’s a competition, of any kind, between NH & MA…I’m screaming ‘MASShole’ as fast as anybody, but I also grew up an hour from Boston. It’s where everybody I knew went when they wanted to go to ‘a City’. It’s the city that is home to all of the teams I’ve been rooting for since I was 10 years old. It’s the city I lived, worked & played around before I moved to Portland. It’s a city that is still home to friends & relatives. (Also…as an aside, for those of you who didn’t pay attention in History class: It’s also the city where Crispus Attucks, a gentleman of half Native American & half African American descent, became the first person to die fighting for independence from the English…in 1770)

You all know what happened today, I don’t need to go through that. It’s horribly sad. The fact that it happened on Patriots’ Day, which is usually such a wonderful day off from work and school for everyone, & during the Marathon just makes it all the worse. I hope this doesn’t ruin these moments, which are so necessary for the psyche of those in need of a distraction from the long winters in the cold, boring states.

Just try to remember that:

-It doesn’t matter what color the person/people who did this was/were, it’s still terrorism (the use of violence to inflict terror).
-Also, this is no time for racism or creedism. Hating someone for their race or religion is no different from them hating you for yours.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–

-For every sad person who would do something like this, there are 40 more who would run toward an explosion to help anybody that might be hurt. Fred Rogers once said this, which has been getting quite a bit of circulation today (thankfully):

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me,
‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”

Let’s try to get through this like humans & at least show some respect to those that we lost & those who lost them.

Goodnight, Boston. We luv you guys. Sleep well.

Here’s “Dirty Water” by The Standells (w/ some stills of Boston mixed in there):