Big, open vistas, I guess:

 

This would be the front cover:

Samurai edition.  When in doubt, samurai:

Having lived through the last six days, I can say that those were the worst six days of my life.  I thought after September 11, 2001, I would never live a week like that again, but it happened.  Except this time, it was a criminal (actually two) who were hitting very close to where I live.  Thankfully that is now over.

You never realize how important it is to do normal things until that is taken from you.  Last week, I tried to get back to normal.  Some people deal with adversity or difficult situations by locking themselves away.  I try to do the opposite.  I go out and I find people to do things with to get myself out there again.

I went with a group of friends to see the samurai exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts.  It was a perfect way to tear myself away from what was going on and to see some amazing samurai artifacts and costumes.

And to take some funny photos:

 

 

There they go marching by.  And some of the things they wore reminded me of high fashion.  Or what John Belushi would wear to fraternity party in Animal House:

 

 

 

It was a very well done exhibit:

 

I spent the entire day yesterday glued to the TV, on lockdown.  I mean I guess I could have done something productive with my time but I felt like if I stepped away from the TV, something would happen.  The bombing suspect was holed up in the next neighborhood over from mine, only about three miles away.  The governor of Massachusetts ordered us to stay indoors.  All I heard all day was sirens.  All I saw on the TV were SWAT teams going from door to door in Watertown, checking if he was in the house.  All I got all day were message asking me how I was doing, how was I holding up.  A friend actually sent me a biblical verse to read, which I did when things started to get really scary.  Who knew what this madman was going to do?  Where would he strike next?

I hardly ever use this blog to express anger about things.  I use this thing to make jokes and post funny pictures, but this bombing situation has made me extremely angry.  How could you target the marathon?  The Boston Marathon?  How much of a coward do you have to be to strike at the heart of one of the things that makes this city great and unites it?  Do you have something against people overcoming odds and obstacles to run in one of the world’s greatest marathons?  OK, enough.

Well, my city seems to be coming back to normal.  This first picture will be of the non-normal variety, however:

 

Yeah, that is a humvee next to Park Street station.  Nope, no idea why it was there.  It was by the way empty at the time.  But what made it so Boston was that a guy decided to start doing street preaching in front of it.  And to make it super Boston, another guy was heckling him:

 

Oh well.  Boston marathon bomber, you might have brought Boston to a standstill for a day, but you will change it!

If you had told me a week ago that the neighborhood around my Trader Joe’s would be a crime scene and that I’d be going through an abandoned Copley Square Station on the way to work everyday a week ago, I would have told you, you were crazy.  Impossible.  Not in my city.

But here we are.  Bombings.  FBI.  Police posted everywhere.

Somehow though I think my adopted hometown will survive.  Somebody said yesterday in the newspaper that Boston is town where people cheer for difficult things.  And they like challenges.  I also think the humor of this place will help it though this whole tragedy.

Obama came to town today to show his support for Boston.  Honestly, were it not for him, he wouldn’t be who he is.  He goes to Harvard, becomes the first black editor of the law review and enters the national stage.  Today I went down to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End to speak to the people of Boston.  I didn’t get to see him or anything, but I got to hear his words and see the people affected by this tragedy:

 

 

One woman next to me actually broke down and cried.  I didn’t photograph that.  It would have been cruel.  There was a dignified silence about everyone.  Workers from the Red Cross were walking around the crowds as well:

 

I loved the look on this cop’s face.  It said “you messed with the wrong city.”  Actually it said something else, but that is a word I don’t use on this blog:

 

Yeah, that is Lester Holt in the background, the host of Dateline NBC.  No, I wasn’t there to gawk at celebrities.  Not now.  Not in this situation.  Actually there was a dignity about everyone there.  When I worked in news, sometimes I saw a fakery to people in the news biz, like “hey, we don’t care about the people we are reporting about.”  But not here.

Here’s Lester Holt in the media scrum:

 

I saw a dignity to everyone at the proceedings.  I really like that:

 

 

 

We’ll get through this.  I know we will.

The world’s media have been abuzz with news about the bombings at the marathon yesterday.  It is weird to see Back Bay, my backyard practically on the cover of every newspaper in the world.  I get to see the streets I walk practically everyday splashed all over the paper and the city that I have grown to love immensely in dedications on Facebook and other places.

What has been forgotten here are the people who run the marathon.  I don’t mean this year.  I mean every year.  People from all walks of life, for different reasons.  People run for charity, to raise money for cancer research.  Dana Farber Cancer institute, for whom I walked the marathon last September has a team, as do many universities, hospitals and charities.  Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the whole thing was that there was a team from Newtown, Connecticut in the race.  As if those people haven’t seen enough already.

But anyway, I am going to post these pictures of the runners.  The people who make the marathon great and those who will continue to make it great and get it out from under the cloud of tragedy.  These people will never be cowards:

 

My day started bursting with anticipation and good mood for what is traditionally my favorite day of the year.  The Boston Marathon.  The festival of athletic achievement, people running for their friends, people running because they can, people in chicken suits and people who outrun our local train system.

But today new words will forever be associated with my beloved Boston marathon.  Explosions.  Death.  Critical but stable condition.  Fatalities.  And it will never the same again.

It was very surreal to watch Back Bay, where I always go for a bit of shopping fun after work on the front cover of every newspaper in the world.  It was also surreal to hear President Obama speaking about my beloved marathon of my adopted hometown in such a sad and tragic way.

I hope I never have to post an image like this again:

Not actual spider webs, but many different, otherwise dissimilar things that resemble spiderwebs: