Sunday, April 21, 2013

Boston v. Royals, a home coming.

Things have been a little rough in Boston recently.  I was home for the afternoon on Monday, April 15th, as public schools in Massachusetts are largely on break this week. I had the local NPR station on, as I did house work. After hearing about the bombing I turned on the TV and was shocked to see what was happening. I am not a marathon attendee as I'm not a big fans of crowds, and this is one of the biggest crowds in the city annually. This area, however, is one I know pretty well. I have visited an acupuncturist in the building above one of the bombing locations. I've been to the Copley library dozens of times. To see somewhere so familiar stained with blood, inundated with chaos, was jarring. 

The following days our city was coming to understand what had happened. Thursday evening photos of the suspected bombers were released. I was driving on 93 north back home around 10:30 that night, and saw a number of state police cars fly past me. I can only assume they were headed to Cambridge, as the events were unfolding there. I was awoken at 6:30 by a robocall to stay home. The city was in lockdown, the manhunt was underway. By the end of the day Friday, one suspect has been killed, the second is police custody. 

Which brings me to Saturday, April 20th. We as a community had been on edge for a workweek. And I was going to a baseball game with my sister. I don't attend games often, this was a special treat to begin with. We were in for a treat; a good game and a cultural moment. 

 There was a clear police presence.
 We were still home.




 First responders from the marathon.


 
 Welcome back, Big Papi!


 A beautiful day at the park

 Its Neil Diamond!
 Everyone is standing to sing...
 Sweet Caroline...
 Bum bum bum!

"Fenway Park is a little lyrical bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus like the inside of an old fashioned Easter Egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934 and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between man's Euclidean determinations and nature's beguiling irregularities." John Updike in The New Yorker (1960)