{"id":4702,"date":"2009-05-25T17:56:29","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T00:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=4702"},"modified":"2009-05-25T18:05:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T01:05:13","slug":"boston-boston-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/25\/boston-boston-boston\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Boston Boston."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is not the city I visited last week.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s on the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t it look quaint and, yes, maybe even compact, from up in the sky?\u00c2\u00a0 And the strange colors?\u00c2\u00a0 The polarizer on my camera and the polarizer on the plane windows got realllll friendly-like and made these colors.\u00c2\u00a0 Groovy.<\/p>\n

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Spending four days in Boston was a dizzying, unsettling experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Not because of the long work days.<\/p>\n

And not because I embarrassingly bought the first “Twilight” book to read during the trip (*seriously blushing*).<\/p>\n

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I stayed in two incredible communities (Jamaica Plain<\/a> and Brookline<\/a>) both architecturally and historically rich.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like being surrounded with the beautiful architecture of an old city, yet with the added bonus of public transportation, roads, and sidewalks wide enough for bicyclists.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard that the improvements were made to facilitate use of the public transport by folks with limited mobility.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no clogged sewer drains.\u00c2\u00a0 The streets were paved smooth — not one hole, bump, or even an unmet seam to mar your way.\u00c2\u00a0 The gutters were clear of dirt and debris.\u00c2\u00a0 Public spaces were clean, with plentiful information centers, bathrooms, and historical markers.\u00c2\u00a0 Traffic was constant, but moving and managed.\u00c2\u00a0 Police popped up to move traffic and pedestrians along.\u00c2\u00a0 And those were all happening in the parts of town where parents don’t want to live because the schools are bad.<\/p>\n

If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it, either.<\/p>\n

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Really.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like people got together, agreed on the things that made a nice urban environment, and then made it happen.<\/p>\n

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It was fantastic.<\/p>\n

And also?\u00c2\u00a0 A bit creepy.<\/p>\n

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Don’t get me wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m all intellectual and deep-n-stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 I can totally hang with my erudite academic peeps.\u00c2\u00a0 But I think, after awhile, the nirvana-like perfection stresses me out.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I just want to hang out in generic flip-flops, drink from the bottom shelf, and chase it down with Folger’s from a Styrofoam cup.\u00c2\u00a0 And I want to do it with six other people who couldn’t care less about it just as long as they get a swig.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not perfect, but I’m working on it.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess I love that my city can say the same thing.<\/p>\n

But I’m happy that Boston is so nice.\u00c2\u00a0 What a great place to have in our country.<\/p>\n

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Even in the construction zone of a church, being rebuilt after a fire destroyed it almost 2 years ago, kids were playing in the relative safety of the yard.\u00c2\u00a0 Right beside a trailer set up for community services.\u00c2\u00a0 Just, nice.<\/p>\n

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All of these pictures were taken in Jamaica Plain last Tuesday night, the day I arrived.\u00c2\u00a0 My Boston College colleague and mentor walked for several hours around the neighborhood with me — we stopped in a local bookstore, walked around the ‘pond,’ had a fantastic feast of Indian cuisine, and polished it off with ice cream from the local dairy.<\/p>\n

And.<\/p>\n

There were messages like this all over…<\/p>\n

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This is not the city I visited last week.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s on the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t it look quaint and, yes, maybe even compact, from up in the sky?\u00c2\u00a0 And the strange colors?\u00c2\u00a0 The polarizer on my camera and the polarizer on the plane windows got realllll friendly-like and made these colors.\u00c2\u00a0 Groovy. Spending four days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,16],"tags":[219],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4714,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702\/revisions\/4714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}