Boston Strong, indeed. What a fine city.
Over the years, I've been to Boston countless times for business and pleasure. But I have not been back for some time. Now I'm here with friends, playing tourist and rediscovering the city.
Boston has so much to offer: it's a walkable city in the heart of New England; it has a maritime culture from it's beautiful situation on the Atlantic coast; it is ripe with history given it's role as a central character in the founding of America and all; it has beautiful green spaces, distinct architecture, and a great food and entertainment scene; it has diverse neighborhoods representing different economic groups and ethnicities; and it is saturated with leading universities and hospitals and the educated people those places attract.
So I've been tootling like a tourist around Bean Town the last couple of days. I took trolley and harbor boat tours. I went to the North End to test whether Mike's or Modern is the better bakery (I have a view but I best keep it to myself). I wandered around Cambridge to check out MIT and Harvard (By the by, years ago I spent a great deal of time at MIT, but I can hardly recognize the campus and all that is around it now with all the new construction.). I wandered around Beacon Hill and along Charles Street (If you are there, check out Twentieth Century Limited at 73 Charles - a vintage store owned and operated by a great character named Paul Turnberg.). I strolled through Boston Common and the Public Garden. I walked through Back Bay taking time to pass by my old haunt - the elegant Eliot Hotel. I went to Chinatown (Oh, I discovered a great restaurant for seafood there - well actually, from the signs in the window, Zagat discovered it before I did, but I stumbled on it while walking around. East Ocean City on Beach Street. They serve the freshest seafood cooked how you like at awesomely reasonable prices. The staff are a bit brusque but that's OK, I'm not looking for new friends.).
Now I'm walking the Freedom Trail around downtown. I lap this stuff up. I'm a history lover and a political junkie. I follow politics like others follow pro sports. So all this political history is just my thing.
As I walk the trail, I'm wondering what all these icons of American history were really like back in their day. With the passage of time, history - especially national history - tends to venerate central public figures and put them up on a pedestal (in Boston that's literally true with so many of these dudes on statues everywhere you look). We hear of the bold actions and grand speeches of these founding fathers. But was there the partisanship and personal attacks back then like we see now? Could something of the magnitude of the Declaration of Independence be chiseled out by today's politicians?
These days, we are witnesses to schoolyard antics in Washington that are so bad, if they did happen at a school, the culprits would end up with detentions if not suspensions. But Congress doesn't even have a "time out" corner. Maybe it needs one...and a few dunce caps.
Part of the problem is the 24-hour news cycle and coverage of politicians' every (mis)step. Arguably our information age is a good check against power but it also de-mystifies our leaders and the political process. We see the sausage being made and that's not always a good thing.
I'm reminded of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. During the campaign, I was in Washington at Reagan National Airport and the gift stores had heaps of political paraphernalia for sale. By this time, Barack Obama had won against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and John McCain was the Republican candidate.
Here it was the heat of the campaign to elect the "leader of the free world", and the shops were chock-a-block full of the gaudiest merchandise you can imagine. Take for example bags of chocolates called "Democratic Chocolate Crap" and the Republican equivalent to mock each side's platforms. It was all so base. I expected to see a carnival barker out front.
Then I saw the worst of the worst - a Hillary Clinton nutcracker. Secretary Clinton was depicted as a doll in a pant suit with her legs apart and a nutcracker between them. To use it, you squeezed the doll's legs to crack a nut. The package touted that it would "Crush the hardest nuts" and stated "What did you expect, a Teddy Bear?".
Really? For the first time in U.S. history, a woman had just been in contention to be a party's candidate for president and the national capital's airport was selling her image as a nutcracker? Who made this stuff and who bought it?
As I sat in the terminal lamenting this state of affairs, a blow horn on a cell phone sat near me. He was sporting a Lucky Charms ball cap and chuckling into his phone telling the unfortunate soul on the other end that he had just found the best gifts for everyone. I looked down and saw a bag full of the Hillary Clinton nutcrackers. Good grief.
But for now, I can forget all the current political "sausage" and lose myself in the great American political history that Boston offers up. I'm reading part of the Declaration of Independence from a plaque, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". That's good stuff.
Thanks Boston, for reminding us of the good stuff. Boston Strong, indeed!
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