Tag Archives: boston

2/14/25 Boston Common

In spite of cold temps and intermittent gusts of wind blasting in off the Atlantic, the Valentine’s Day protest on Boston Common was well-attended. Three hundred? Maybe more? Ken thought five, but that seems a little high to me.

Such is my life that when Sarah Kendzior liked the photo of her quote that I posted on Bluesky, it was a little thrill.

The Embrace might be growing on me.

We’ve been rewatching the HBO series JOHN ADAMS. It opens with the Boston Massacre, so I wanted to go honor the five fallen men from that day, but the Granary Burial Ground was closed. It looked like pure ice in there.

The HBO show is really well-acted with lots of local scenery, but it’s a strange time to be watching. It’s not a balm or a distraction, that’s for sure. “A Republic, if you can keep it,” Ben Franklin famously utters.

The birth of independence. The sacrifices. The wrangling over how to express our ideals. Not perfectly done, but still.

All to get out from under the tyranny of a king.

Tonight I went to a birthday party. A small, warm gathering with interesting folks and good food. Snow falling outside.

In a living room full of eight people that I was meeting for the first (maybe second) time, SIX of us had attended the protest the day prior. Six! I’m not sure why, but that really made me feel good.

PS I understand needing to step away, take breaks. I hope our community holds though. It means the world to me.

Here is Marti’s sweater and pin for tomorrow.

Tidbits on the Irish and Black people

7 Replies

Did you know that Frederick Douglass traveled to Ireland to fund raise for the abolitionist cause? And it got awkward because the people with money were the landed gentry — the Protestants, many with AngloSaxon roots — while he, as a member of an oppressed group, identified with the poor Catholics.

I learned this in a fantastic book by Irish writer Colum McCann entitled, Transatlantic.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ewhalle1 (@ewhalle1)

Boston is a very racist city with a shameful past, particular around bussing. It hurts me (somewhere below the collarbones) to think about it. It’s getting worse, with hate groups on the rise, giving credence to something I heard Robin DiAngelo say in an interview* today and that is that we’ve reverted to a pre-Civil Rights state here in America.

Back in the early nineties, when I was a lot younger and also a lot stupider about matters of race, my Black boss, who was from Mississippi, said she experienced more racism in Boston than where she grew up. At the time I was inclined to think that hyperbole.

No more.

* podcast: Bossed Up, Feb 2021 episode

Thanks, Ellen and Doris for providing reference (here are my listening tips: 1) fast forward through four minutes of ads and intros at the outset and 2) if you have been thinking about anti-racism, you can maybe skip the first fifteen minutes (or listen at 1.5 speed, which is what I did)).

Middle Passage Marker Boston

6 Replies

Labor Day seemed an appropriate day to visit the new display marking the Middle Passage down on Long Wharf, Boston. It is yards from the Atlantic and the site where Africans were unloaded from ships and sold.

I took a lot of pictures, so that I could read later. Why? Parking fees were obscene. I set my timer for 35 minutes, determined not to pay more than $18. But we didn’t really want to pay even that, so we didn’t dally. Made it back in under twenty minutes. High fives at the parking pay kiosk.

Most of the business along Long Wharf these days is tourism.

Almost all of the marker’s text was devoted to highlighting local luminary African Americans, like Phyllis Wheatley (blogged about here). I expected the narrative to reveal the horrors of the slave trade, so this surprised me a little. Did you know, for example, that the Guinea ships could be smelled from four miles off, so vile was the hygiene and carnage? Or that a loss of life in the neighborhood of ten percent was an acceptable margin in terms of turning a profit?

If you read my Facebook post on this yesterday, you’ll have seen the LONG laundry list of ways that the North profited from slavery, pictured below.

Next time we go, I’ll bring flowers and we’ll look for on-street parking.

And hello

8 Replies

More than usual going on. A beloved friend visiting. Being out and about with her — MFA and JFK Library. Then a dinner party. K with a mole that needed not just removal but excising. Meeting with estate planner same day as surgery. Crafting a query letter for novel. Sending it out once. Teaching a class (yeah!).

Purchased a nifty mini-light box. Hope to have time to really use soon.

It’s been very windy and warm but tonight the temps are supposed to drop: time to bring the last of the plants in. I’ll be tied up for most of the next week but will post some pictures anyway, here and on Instagram.

Still in between

10 Replies

Dumplings in Chinatown.

Home Depot run followed by Savers. Look at that beautiful linen shawl and swath of Woolrich houndstooth!

Ansel Adams at the MFA — unbelievably crowded. Tolerable because I know I’ll be back.

Watching Bird Box (creepy good with some unexplained baloney that I now call ‘the Lost Effect’ — after the TV show).

Not sharing.

Fitbit early observations: the steps have got to be inflated (it doesn’t take 1200 to get dressed and make breakfast), sleep stages are all in the normal range but I could use a little more, and I really am not that keen on having this apparatus on my wrist (don’t tell K. And anyway I know I’ll find it useful).