Needless to say, I am thrilled that they found the two suspects and that one of them (apparently the younger brother) has been taken alive, which will hopefully give the investigators the chance to get all the details they need. I sure hope so. It will be nice to have a nice, calm week to settle down to a regular routine again. Admittedly, after this past week, I almost wouldn’t be surprised to have Godzilla march down Commonwealth Avenue. If that happens, I guarantee that I will not be one of the people who waits to get stepped on.
So yeah, tomorrow I am going to try to do some housecleaning, put up our new HDTV antenna, and do some good Portuguese home cooking. Maybe I can get a decent night’s sleep tonight too.
We are ok. We are currently in lockdown and nobody is going anywhere. The streets are empty of people save for sirens and law enforcement/EMS. The MBTA is closed entirely as are all business in Cambridge, Watertown, Allston/Brighton, Waltham, Belmont, Newton, and all of Boston. The same cities are also ordered to have everyone stay home/indoors and parts of Cambridge/Watertown have no traffic allowed in or out, either the car or human variety.
Now that I have had some time to sort of process the events of the past week, I think I have managed to sort it all out inside my head. And so yesterday when a friend and parishioner asked me how I was doing and what I made of all this, I told him what I thought.
I said “This is Boston. We’ll bounce back. We always do.”
We’re 48 hours out from the bombings and things are… different. It isn’t just the obvious police presence or the national guard people in uniform everywhere. Things are different. Yesterday everything was eerily calm, almost like the afternoon of 9/11 when all flights were grounded and nobody knew what was going on, except that yesterday there were helicopters in the air overhead and we were all waiting.
Waiting for news of who else was going to die. Waiting to hear from that last person or two that we hadn’t yet heard from. Waiting for news from the police, the feds, the various hospitals. Waiting. It was like life in suspended animation.
We were going to work and going through the motions, but everyone was asking the same thing, “Should we be doing this?” “Is this appropriate?” “What is the right thing to do now?”
Nobody has an answer for that. There is no single answer when there is a 15 block long scar in the middle of your city that was carved out by a coward with bombs, a bone to pick with humanity, a need to see his human fears and frailty writ large on the TV, and not enough guts or intelligence to make the change he wants to see from within the system.
We opened early today – about 8 AM – and stayed open until about 7 PM, when our second service ended. So a long day today. But a reporter from Channel 6 in Providence stopped in to talk to our new minister as well as a few Marathon runners. You may see yours truly doing security in the background.
-Geoff
To see the video that this still comes from, click here.
This is a quick post to let people who have been calling and emailing from near and far know that we’re OK. We were driving back from Boston when the bombing happened. The Cambridge EMS, Fire, and Hazmat were screaming past in the other direction and I casually wondered if there’d been a bomb threat. Oops.
We’ve heard from one friend who ran today and he finished and cleared the area before the bombs went off.
I’m sure there will be more information and more to post about later. Stay safe, everyone.
I wish I’d received this information before I sent out my email blast and did my prior post. But, I didn’t . I got it today. So I’m posting it now so you can all see the details I didn’t have before. Enjoy. And please come, this will be a really good concert.
A celebration of the resilience of the human spirit through the centuries, in music by Messiaen, Shostakovich, Poulenc, Penderecki, Tippett, and more.
Sunday, April 21, 3pm
Mission Church
1545 Tremont St.
Mission Hill, Boston
With Eliko Akahori (piano), Lilit Hartunian (violin), Rafael Popper-Keizer (cello), Amy Avocat (clarinet)
Tickets: $20 general admission / $15 for students and seniors available at the door)
Sunday, April 28, 3pm
First Parish (UU)
75 The Great Road, Bedford
With Lilut Hartunian (violin), Elizabeth Connors (clarinet), Bradford Conner (piano)
Suggested donation: $20 / $15 students & seniors (a portion of proceeds will benefit UUSC-UUA Haiti Relief Fund)
Music composed in times of oppression and persecution often possesses a singular resilience that inspires and gives witness to the courageous dimension of the human spirit. In this concert The Seraphim Singers presents choral and instrumental works composed under conditions of religious persecution in Renaissance England, slavery in 18th and 19th century America, the Holocaust during World War II, and totalitarianism in the Soviet era.
Tickets (available at the door): $20 general admission /$15 for students & seniors
Music composed in times of oppression and persecution often possesses a singular resilience that inspires and gives witness to the courageous dimension of the human spirit. In this concert The Seraphim Singers present choral and instrumental works composed under conditions of religious persecution in Renaissance England, slavery in 18th and 19th century America, the Holocaust during World War II, and totalitarianism in the Soviet era. Featuring:
Poulenc: Un soir de neige
Tippett: Selections from A Child of Our TIme
Messiaen: Selections from Quatuor pour la fin du temps and choral works by Shostakovich, Penderecki, Stanhope, Zuckerman, Goudimel, Sweelinck, and Tallis
The Books are Taking Over... 