Thank you

As a city, Boston has never really cited Mayor Tom Menino’s eloquence as one of his strengths. But at last night’s press conference that wrapped up a tense, nightmarish day in greater Boston, he summed up my feelings perfectly.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.“

I don’t think I’ve used that short phrase or said thanks more in my life than this week.

Thank you to friends, both near and far, who checked in on me on Monday.

Thank you to friends who asked about the runners I was cheering, even though they only knew them from the screen grabs I posted of their times as they ran 26.2 miles.

Thank you to everyone who offered to help.

Thank you to everyone who helped me to help my friend find out about Krystle Campbell.

I’m thankful that someone who knows and loves both my friend and Krystle broke the news of Krystle’s death to my friend, not me.

Thank God (fate, whatever) none of my friends who live in and near Watertown were hurt yesterday.

In the midst of this madness, I started a new job this week at Solomon McCown&. It was surreal for everyone there, but they couldn’t have been more gracious. Thank you for setting up my computer. Thank you for showing me which printer to choose in Outlook. Thank you for starting me out slow. Thank you for showing me the bathroom. Thank you for handling all my questions during a stressful week.

And thank you to everyone who sent good wishes for success at the new gig. Like every big change, it’s scary and exciting.

Thank you to Boston for showing the world that we’re not a bunch of cold, heartless, selfish bastards.

Thank you, Colbert Report, for this.

And thank God the immediate danger is over. Let’s move on the part where we celebrate the lives of those we lost, and treat each other a little bit better going forward.

Thank you.

[ETA: And, obviously, thank you to all the police and public safety personnel who kept us safe. Hope you enjoy a nice long sleep and many free beers.]

Patriot’s Day 2013

Boston Marathon runners just after they took the left on Boylston Street. 1:15pm.

Patriot’s Day is my favorite day of the year in Boston. While Easter gets all the glory as the unofficial start of spring, in Boston, it’s Marathon Monday. Girls wear shorts and flip-flops to the morning Red Sox game when it’s about 20 degrees too cold for it. Bars open ungodly early, but nearly everyone behaves themselves—perhaps the runners outside remind the young folks that day drinking is also not a sprint, but a marathon? Our reputedly cold city thaws on Patriot’s Day—both meteorologically and socially.

My day started at the Pour House, with the boyfriends of a couple of runners. We drank beer. We got a table right by the front windows. We had some cheap breakfast. My other friends joined us. The guys got up to move further down the course to cheer on their runners. The rest of us stayed, polishing off cheap mimosas and cheering as the elite runners cruised by at what seemed to be an impossibly fast speed. Realizing we needed to take a break from drinking, we set ourselves up outside. We saw one friend run by. Knowing  another friend was shortly behind her, we decided to mosey closer to the finish line and have another drink.

We weaved in and out of the crowds. We passed bars with cover charges, and one that contained some acquaintances my  friend wanted to avoid. We walked behind the plywood-encased risers at the finish line where VIPs and media watched the marathoners’ last strides. Finally, we stopped at the Charlesmark Hotel. There wasn’t a line and didn’t appear to be a cover, so we popped inside. We made a beeline for the bathroom at the back of the bar, which was a one-room affair for both sexes, so it took a while for the three of us to make it through the line. We were just regrouping to move towards the bar and its open windows when we heard a loud boom. Shortly after, we heard a second.

I fell into one of those slow-motion trances like in a nightmare. The sound was somewhat metallic, and while very loud, didn’t shake the building in any way I could feel in the middle back section of the bar. I thought the scaffolding holding up the bleachers had fallen, given the metal clang I heard in the explosion. One of my friends later said she thought that the giant monitor over the finish line had fallen. We held back, waiting to see what we should do next. We started to smell smoke, so I thought a transformer had blown. (Happens sometimes in the Back Bay.)

Then we saw dozens of people rush away from the finish line, looking stricken. Whatever happened was bad. It was time to leave.

We went out the back door next to the bathroom. We walked down the public alley in the back, cut onto Newbury Street, and kept moving. My phone was working, and I checked Twitter where I saw the initial reports of an explosion.

Bomb?

To the Loud Girl Talking During a Concert

Now is not the time to catch up with friends. That time was about three hours ago, before the doors even opened at the Paradise. When most people meet their friends at a nearby restaurant for some food and a non-schwag beer. And if they can’t make that, they go grab a slice once the house lights are back up after the show. Nobody makes idle chit-chat when the main act is talking onstage between numbers. Except for you.

You, barely a day over twenty-one. You, emphatically gesticulating as you catch up on the latest gossip in your social circle. You point with the half-empty bottle of Sam Light in your hand because you just. can’t. believe. what. happened. on. Friday! Your voice carries clearly above the amplified voices of the band, through the wadded up orange foam in my ear canal. Not a word escapes me. Though I wish it would.

Other concertgoers glare at you. But you just prattle on. The singer tells a joke. The audience laughs. You keep right on going. I turn and give you a scowl. You miss it. But another woman behind me does not.

“Do you want to fight her, or should I?”

Finally, sensing the crowd is behind me, I realize I’ve had enough.

“Hey. Be quiet.”

You turn, the corner of your lip raising as you sneer. “Excuse me?”

“You’re at a show. This is part of it. Shut up.”

You roll your eyes as you exhale a long puff in disbelief that someone could dare speak to you that way. “OK, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

You slink off, probably to fetch yet another Sam Light. The show goes on, the music loud enough to drown out even your foghorn voice. You return a couple of songs later, much quieter than before.

A concert is not the time to show off the sweet Instagram you took of your morning latte. It isn’t the time to chat with friends, unless you’re saying “This song rocks!” as the first few chords of your favorite jam fill the air. Actual human beings are making art right in front of your face and filling your earholes with it. It’s an amazing experience. Enjoy it. Or at least shut up so the rest of us can appreciate a good show.

The Real (Non-Digital) World

I spent the better part of Sunday in a stupor watching reruns of The Real World: San Fransisco. When it originally aired in 1994, I was thirteen, sneaking reruns when my Mom wasn’t home because she’d expressly forbid my watching MTV. I remember being impressed by the cast’s sophisticated lives: going to shows, riding cable cars around the city, racing soapbox derby cars down the steep streets of San Francisco, and meeting boys in bars. To my rural barely-pubescent brain, this all seemed wildly exotic and like something I couldn’t wait to do when I grew up.

Watching the episodes nearly 20 years later, I was struck by something different: the complete lack of devices that are now ubiquitous in our lives. When Judd goes out to work on his cartoons in a cafe, he uses pen and paper, as does everyone studying or working around him. When Puck and Cary are talking at a bar, there were no cell phones on the table or in anyone’s hand. There were newspapers in nearly every shot. And the kids were reading them! One even got a job at a paper! I don’t think the casts of the modern seasons of The Real World are even literate.

Perhaps it’s the editing of the show evolving over the decades, but there seemed to be much more stillness in the San Francisco episodes. Nobody is diving for a phone every few seconds. Many of the scenes take place in the house, not during a blur of sloppy nights out at bars that lured the MTV stars inside and provided them scads of free booze. Issues are resolved with calm words (largely), not fists. It made me wonder if we’ve lost something in the past 19 years.

Then this morning I read that our addiction to technology is ruining our capacity to connect with each other in a genuine way.

When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.

If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers.

I propose we start throwing Analog Parties.

Farewell, Sweet Phoenix

Like everyone who ever lived within a 100-mile radius of Boston, I was shocked when the Boston Phoenix announced it had published its final issue late last week after 47 years in the alternative weekly business. Like everyone who’d ever moved to Boston prior to the Internet infiltrating every aspect of our lives, picking up the latest issue of the Phoenix to see what was going on in town was of the utmost importance in college. In the age of smart phones and Twitter, I made it a point to read the excellent stories the magazine was still putting out, even if the event listings weren’t as critical to my social life.

There are many great appreciations of the Phoenix, from those who worked there to those who worked for the competition. Many of them contemplate what a loss like this means for the would-have-been alt-weekly writers of the future, like this post from Robert David Sullivan.

The Phoenix is how I got started as a journalist (after a short-but-terrifying stint as a reporter in central Mass.). My experience cannot be duplicated today. [...] I’m sad for myself about the Phoenix’s closing, but I feel terrible for all of the people who might have followed in my footsteps. It’s already hard to believe, but there was once a way to start a journalism career without shoveling free copy into the maw of the Huffington Post.

Excuse me if I’m getting a touch existential, but every generation’s path to success cannot be duplicated. We all have to find our own way in the environment we’re born into. My brief career in journalism (blogging on my own, getting shout-outs from Universal Hub, freelancing in exchange for the occasional gift certificate, freelancing for Boston magazine, getting a staff writer gig at Boston, then being laid off during the economic collapse of the late aughts) wouldn’t have been possible had I come in a bit earlier or later. Every aspect of my life—both personal and professional—can be traced back to opening that Blogger account in 2003 because I was terrified I’d never use the writing degree I’d paid tens of thousands of dollars to get.

While the Internet may have contributed to the death of the Phoenix, it’s also the source of optimism. People still want good, curated information. Some days I feel that I have to step away from my Twitter feed because I can’t possibly read all the exciting content I see there on a minute-by-minute basis. (And I’m not just talking about cat GIFs.) Storytelling will always be important, and we will always look to some authority to vet the information we read. We need people to dig through the bullshit to find the nuggets of truth. And since shit stinks, we need to pay them to do so. Someone will figure out how to make it work. I just hope he or she does it soon to fill the void left by publications like the Phoenix.

Everybody Calm Down About Marissa Mayer

We live in a culture in which our smartphones are never far from our grubby little hands. As a result, work is always close too. The temptation to make sure nothing has gone horribly awry is caved to on Saturday birthday parties and weeknight dinners out. In many offices, it’s expected that you’re plugged in at most times.

The one upside to this shift in our work culture is the precious work from home privilege. When work is everywhere, it seems only fair that sometimes one should be able to work offsite. Unless, of course, you work at Yahoo!, where CEO Marissa Mayer just called her scattered employees back to the cubicle by eliminating working from home.

Cue the shitshow.

No Duh, Science: Gym Fitness Sucks

Photo from Runner’s World Facebook page

Working out in a gym sucks. Working out outside sucks marginally less. You know this. I know this. But science is trying to figure out why it sucks less to exercise outside.

Studies haven’t yet established why, physiologically, exercising outside might improve dispositions or inspire greater commitment to an exercise program.

Hey science. Let me tell you about my gym workout tonight.

After pulling into the gym parking lot, I tried to find an open space. Some jerk had parked horizontally across four spaces. FOUR. How his or her car hadn’t had all its paint keyed off is a mystery. If it weren’t for that pesky being raised to respect other people’s property thing, I’d have given it a swipe.

After checking in, I grabbed a year-old magazine for the sole purpose of covering the display on the treadmill. Why don’t they allow a runner to turn off the countdown clock and distance display? Just having a clock on the wall in front of me is torture enough while I’m plodding along on the treadmill. Once I had the machine programmed with the time and program I want, I start fiddling with Spotify. I love Spotify because I can make new playlists frequently, but I didn’t make a new one before hitting the gym tonight and I’m burnt out on the few lists I’ve made. So it took me a good five minutes to find a playlist that was peppy enough to power me through my run.

With the music settled and the phone out of my hand, I speed up the treadmill. I feel good. Then the sweat starts. Rivers of sweat without a breath of fresh air to provide even a moment of relief. Ceiling fans spin in the rafters. Why can’t I feel the air move? Why doesn’t someone open a damn window? I pat my face every few minutes with the towel I brought from home. The sweat continues. What felt like a fun challenge a few minutes ago now feels like torture.

“UNHHHHH.”

A guy two treadmills down has started moaning periodically during his run. This is unusual. Sure, guys in the weight room huff and puff when they lift. I’m sniffling like crazy because I’ve still got residual congestion from last week’s cold. But I’m not doing it so loudly someone several feet away and pumping Madonna songs can hear it.

“UNNNHHHH.”

I’m momentarily transported back to my outdoor runs during warmer and brighter weather. Typically, I’m by a body of water. I set RunKeeper on my phone, then tuck it away in a pocket or waist belt. Since I’m by water, I listen to the water lap against the land instead of music. I don’t know how long I’ve been running or how fast I’m going. I take in the scenery. Skin is exposed to sunlight and fresh air. I’m sweating, but the breeze in my face takes care of it. My thoughts wander. I still get bored towards the end of my run, but I can see the physical finish line I’ve set for myself. Then I stop the RunKeeper GPS and see how I’ve done. Usually, it’s a stronger performance than on the treadmill.

Finally, tonight’s workout was over. I stopped my treadmill and went to get a disinfectant-soaked paper towel to wipe it down. I walked past a girl who smelled like salami. The moaner got off his treadmill, reunited with his bro friends who’d been sprinkled on various cardio equipment, and high-fived them.

So yes, science, I’ll be back outside once Daylight Saving Time is back and I feel safe enough to be out there. Beats the hell out of the gym.