Lizkdc Dislocation

That Whitey Bulger Thing

Naturally I wanted to write about the capture of Whitey Bulger, and yet all week, I found the words were not flowing for me.

For one thing, what's left to say? Every single voice in our city, and in most of the state, and among a whole lot of people who ever lived here, left here, or in any way thought they knew Boston, has weighed in and will be weighing in, for ever and a day, amen.

It's like our local version of Al Capone, Bigfoot, and Watergate all blended into one big corn-beef hash of  scary corruption, seductive mystery, corrosive suspicion, sour disillusionment, satisfaction at justice long-delayed,  with the garish ketchup blood of tabloid excitement to top it off.

The ending of the Whitey story is about the passing away of one way of Boston seeing itself, the end of some powerful illusions about the role of the outsider and the righteous indignation of resentment. Ever since he went on the run in '95, and the bodies began being dug up, and the long tale of his sordid partnership with the FBI, this shift has been happening, bit by bit, but it's only become fully visible now that he's visible once more. 

What was he doing all these years? He's carved out a nice little retirement, with his apartment in a nice town by the sea, his girlfriend and his comfortable stack of cash. Not much different, come to think of it, then he might have had coming, had he ever done an honest day's work in his life instead of landing dozens of rotting bodies that he's shot or strangled in a wide array of beaches, quarries, and car trunks. Like the fictional Sopranos, part of the horror is that he conducted all that brutality to secure himself nothing but some selfish suburban comfort.

 

Equal Love, Part Two

I had it in my mind to write about a few other things, but I'm ending up just going to the keyboard to write about this:

"Because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional." – Judge Vaughn Walker.

Two years ago, on a rainy November day, we rallied at Boston City Hall for equality of marriage, equality of respect, equality of love, for our friends and family and neighbors. The day and the mood were somber.

Two years ago, on a muggy humid day in Brooklyn, we gathered for our friends. The mood was affectionate and crazy and funny and inspiring.

Today, the mood is . . . well, this:

Death of a Schoolgirl

The Boston Globe ran another editorial page column today about Phoebe Prince, the Irish schoolgirl who committed suicide in a small, upscale town in Massachusetts after being tormented by the other girls. It's a good column that touches on anti-bullying legislation and trash-talking in sports and media, but dances around the problem completely, to my mind.

Maybe because, of all the stuff that's hard to talk about,  this is among the hardest.  It's stuff that both kids and parents resist putting out there in front of one another.

Shame.

Cruelty.

I  speak from memory.  Once upon a time, a popular football player in my high school thought it was hilarious to write sexual threats and insults on notebook paper, then stick them in a girl's locker or her desk. He and his friends would be lurking nearby, ready to burst into guffaws when the recipient read it.

Waiting to catch you in that precious moment when your face burned, your eyes teared up, your mouth went all wrong,  and a big old neon sign of visible humiliation went on over your head for all to enjoy.  This "teasing" contained messages such as . . .

The Man at the Door (Ted Kennedy's Death)

Of all the stories about Senator Kennedy in this morning's Globe, this one reached out and grabbed me. It's about Ted Kennedy quietly attending wakes for local servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sharing a gift of insight arising out of sheer, damned misfortune--nobody knows better then he what it's like to get the bitter news that turns your life upside down.

There's a tiny detail in the article recalling the first time it happened, a death forgotten or never known by those who don't follow Kennedy history.  It was August, 1944, in the midst of World War II, when a priest came to the door of the family home to tell them that the oldest Kennedy son, "Joe Jr," had been killed in a bombing raid over Germany.  Ted was just a kid at the time, the youngest of nine. That man on the doorstep in his black clothing, bringing bad news that couldn't be unsaid, must have left a mark.

R Is for Rocket

This week, the country remembers the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing.

What I remember is how my parents got me and my brothers up in what was, to us, the middle of the night.  And we came downstairs in our footie pajamas.  And some ghostly men jumped around on the TV.

But it was the start of something.  My brother Peter became obsessed with space adventures, in the way that sensitive little boys still do.  His favorite toy, Billy Blastoff, led expeditionary missions to the top of the dogwood tree, accompanied by a motley crew composed of my dolls in their torn dresses and rat's nest hair.  An ice cream truck sang as it circled the block.  The summer air beat down on the cement sidewalks and tiny green yards.  We left Billy mid-moon-conquest and went to Elmer's Store for Hoodsie's ice cream cups with those little wooden spoons.

Today, my nephews believe in space, though the real-life moon walk and the workaday Space Shuttle with its plumbing problems are inextricably wound together with the fictional film world of robots and heroes. It's both the past AND the future, their version of the Wild West and King Arthur's court, and a place they could envision actually growing up and visiting.

A Roundabout Farewell (to Sarah Palin)

My own mother took me to task for what she termed the heartlessness of my reaction to the Sarah Palin resignation.

Now she's a woman who is so soft-hearted that she's a hero and a prize and also, incredibly annoying.  Like the other day there was a pot of dead flowers and I was throwing them away and she was, literally, trying to talk them back to life:  "you're gonna be okay, you just need a little more time!", and I was all, fine, I'll take them out to the back garden and plant them in a corner and we'll see if they come back to life, ok? Humoring her like a five year old. I poked a hole in the soil with my finger and jammed them in the ground. 

We went off on our trip to Ohio and it rained a lot and we came back and not only had they returned to life but put out little pink blossoms. The little floral bastards.  Mom still talks to them, commiserating in a condescending voice when I am in earshot: "See! Some people are so mean, but I knew you just needed One More Chance."

Twitter's Two Weeks: "Over", and Now, the World's Attention

Here's a startling and ironic juxtaposition

From the headlines of last week:
Twitter hype punctured by study (BBC)
"Nobody Tweets" (Harvard Business Review)

Both pieces responded to the same study, and both took a skeptical look at the hype surrounding the Fail Whale, and with good reason. A nugget which drew special attention was the discovery that 10% of Twitter users--the power tweeters--produce 90% of the tweets, while most users sign up, tweet a few times, then don't appear to speak again. 

Was this a sign that Twitter was yet another over-hyped plaything of the knowledge classes, a successor to the Blackberry in acting more as a sign of belonging than a tool that would actually be of use in the larger culture? And scariest of all for the immensely reputation-sensitive wired classes, was Twitter's aura fading so fast?

But wait! Just as the critics began drawing a bead on the tool's limits, the ground shifted with the dramatic events in Iraq.

Worthy to Be Remembered

Glimpse, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Faneuil Hall through columns of Boston City Hall

Well, there it is, the State of the Union.*

Somebody slap me. Because I sort of feel like . . . getting up tomorrow and doing better, and making private resolves, and acting more generously, in the spirit of Obama saying that he was going to act under the premise that everyone in the Congress was operating out of love of their country, whether they agreed with him or not.**

Reprise Barack Obama "Yes We Can"

One last time.

Question Time (Stewart and Blair)

Below is the most detailed, balanced, informative discussion of the Iraq War and the broader "war on terror" case for war that I've heard from a head of state who lead those efforts.

Check it out at the end of the post. . .