Proper Cup of Coffee

This morning I got 10 sections into my workout with November Project and realized I was done.  Driving home along the river, always a pleasant thing to do especially on a comfortable morning like this one, I figured I'd stop at Dunkin' Donuts for coffee.

When you live in the Boston area, you know there is a Dunkie's on pretty much every corner and there is a consistency (and comfort) in walking in and asking for a an extra large with wicked extra cream, no sugar and knowing you're going to pretty much what you want.  What I hadn't counted on this morning was someone who didn't know how to speak Boston.

In my pre-caffeinated state of mind, I didn't pick up on, "Wicked?"

"Yeah, extra large wicked extra cream, no sugar please."

Then her confusion registered with my slowly waking brain.  The guy behind her said to the kid making coffee, "Extra, extra milk."

She looked at me again.  "Milk or cream?"

"Cream please."

She called the adjustment over to the coffee kid and I paid her.  She then looked and asked, "What does 'wicked' mean?"

I had to think.  Wicked has been a modifier in my life for so long and now I had to define it.

"It's like a superlative.  That was a wicked good play... wicked extra cream..."

"Oh, I see," she laughed.  I laughed and the kid yelled out, "Extra large."

I took one sip and asked the coffee kid, "Did you put sugar in this?"

"Yeah, extra cream and extra sugar...."

"No, just wicked extra cream, no sugar."

"Oh!  OK.  Third times the charm right?"

"Right."

He was right, third time was the charm and the staff was full of smiles and laughs with me.

It was a great way to start the day after walking up and down 10 sections of Harvard Stadium.

In the car I turned on my iPod (which was in shuffle mode) and Trout Fishing in America's "Proper Cup of Coffee" started.  I laughed.  My car and iPhone have a wicked sense of humor  (both evil and superlative in this case) and I drove home loudly singing:

All I want is a proper cup of coffee made in a proper copper coffee pot
I may be off my dot but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot
Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots they have no use for me
If I can't get a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot I'll have a cup of tea.....


 

So Ezra and Keith, thanks for the smile this morning.  It may not have been made in a copper coffee pot, but it was a proper cup of coffee.... finally.

Mama's taking us to the zoo tomorrow....

As part of my rediscovering Boston summer tour, yesterday we went to the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, MA (the smaller of the 2 zoos in Boston) on a whim.

It started with breakfast at a local dinner and me feeling kind of bad ass in my tight jeans and tank top with a drawing of a cat with wings sitting pretty.  I always feel kind of bad ass when I'm wearing a tank top and yesterday, doubly so given the return of the heat to Boston.

I saw, "Always be ready to have the time of your life" written on the specials board over the counter.  That and my attitude made me suggest we "do something."  My husband said, "Want to go to the zoo?"

Um... that's a silly question since 99% of the time the answer will be "YES!"  I let him pick which one and he chose the Stone Zoo.

I am glad to see the Stone Zoo is back up and running.  In 1990 the Commonwealth of MA and Zoo New England closed the place for financial reasons but a small group of volunteers formed the Friends of the Stone Zoo and fought hard and long to get the place reopened in 1992.  A fabulous and visionary head of Zoo New England helped to redesign and refocus the place into the small wonder that it is.

On the way there, the highway sign had an added bonus, "the koalas are here!"  Double score baby!  This was even better than the time a couple of years ago when the sign had "Jaguar Babies" on it because, well, one word: koalas.

Of course, the sign should have said, "The koalas are sleeping," but that's OK because that's what koalas do.  They were there in their fuzzy cuteness and it made me go squee.  They are part of an Australia exhibit that is there for the summer and I will go back at some point to see if I can catch them awake in their fuzzy cuteness to make me squee even louder.

Now the big laugh of the day was not from me singing the Kookaburra song to the kookaburra or me talking to the animals, it came from this:

 Yes, the roadrunner exhibit is next to the coyote exhibit.  I should have checked for the Latin names to see if they had "Accelerati Incredibilus" and "Carnivorous Vulgaris" or "Ultra-Sonicus Ad Infinitum" and "Nemesis Riduclii" or even "Birdius Tastius" and "Poultrius Devourius," but to be honest, I was too busy giggling about the situation.

I was also being stared at by people around me who didn't get the joke.  So it goes.

But along with the koalas, there are lots of babies this season.  There are the baby black and white colobus monkeys (which are cute and white and furry and hidden from view by the adults who form a monkey shield around them in the back of the pen).  There are also baby flamingoes that aren't pink yet.

There were three that I saw hanging out with the flock of adults just being all, "Hey, how's it going.  I'm a cute baby flamingo.  What are you up to?"  The flamingoes tend to smell really bad, particularly in the heat, but I didn't mind because the little fluff balls were just being so cool about the whole thing.

I was excited to see the capybara was back.  When the boys were little and we spent a lot of time at the Stone Zoo (back when Major the Polar Bear was alive), we'd always hang out and talk to the capybaras who are truly rodents of unusual size.  This is a photo of Scooter and he was just chilling with the llamas in the shade behind the educational resource center.

I have always described the Stone Zoo as the perfect toddler length zoo.  About the point your kid is done, you're back at the beginning.  For someone like me, I could spend a long time just hanging out watching one set of animals without feeling like I'm missing anything or having to rush.  For people who are leery of Franklin Park, this is a nice alternative.

It also sparked my desire to add "Ecotarium," which is part zoo, part science museum, to my list of summer rediscoveries - even though it's in Worcester and not Boston.  But if you're looking for a way to spend a nice afternoon, the Stone Zoo is the place to go.

And they have koalas.

She cried "MO! MO! MO!"

 The Pigeon has been trying to drive the bus for 10 years.

Wow.  That means I was running the kids' section at Borders 10 years ago because the day that book came out, I read it for story time to a group of pre-schoolers who loved yelling, "NO!" when the pigeon just begged and begged to drive the bus.

It means little Chesley isn't so little anymore... particularly since he's a college graduate.  The book took on a whole new meaning for him after a bus driver in Poland let my son drive the bus - and the pigeon should know it's not all it's cracked up to be and it's more at the same time.

What can I say beyond what interesting and creative children I have.  Chesley has discussed his idea of a children's book in Latin, See the Bee Fart, with Norton Juster of "Phantom Tollbooth" fame.  He discovered he and Chris Van Allsburg have similar views about Dali and squirrels in a conversation.  The first time he met Eric Carle, the poor boy was tongue tied and, years later, has had some rather eloquent conversations with Eric about some odd subjects.  He and Mo Willems have joked about how he is one of a couple of dozen people who used to watch "The Off Beats" and "Sheep in the Big City." And that's only the beginning of how my children have been positively molded in unexpected ways.  All this has happened because of one magical place - the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Out in Amherst, MA, this hidden gem of Pioneer Valley is on the edge of the Hampshire College campus and always has a variety of events that inspire us to hop in the car and drive out from Boston on a regular basis.  Right now it's the exhibit "Seriously Silly," an exhibit of Mo Willems work, mostly his picture book stuff.  It coincides with the release of "Don't Pigeonhole Me" - a rather large book containing 20 years of his sketchbooks including the early versions of the book "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus."

What I loved were a million little details - the scavenger hunt to find the different color pigeons and the little bits of art around the bottom of the gallery at a kids' eye level.  It shows the process with sketches, detail and a short video of how an idea goes onto the page of his sketch book to being roughed, inked and then scanned to be cleaned and colored.

In the art studio, kids can create the pigeon and the bus as well as other things.   All in all, this is a wonderful little exhibit that reinforces the idea that rarely is art "perfect."  Something kids need to remember as they grow older.  Too often we see the finished product and not the process.  This is a delightful way to see the process and the product all together.  While this exhibit will be there for a while, the other two will not.

The Eric Carle gallery's "Feathers, Fins and Fur" is up until September first.  It's a wonderful chance to see not just the picture book stuff but also some of the tools Eric uses to create his art and some different mediums for him.

The small gallery in the middle has Robert Zakanitch's "Garden of Ordinary Miracles," a lovely A-B-C walk through a garden complete with a case of things like sticky notes with sketches and thoughts and ideas that runs through November.

When you're done there, there's always the Basketball Hall of Fame down the road in Springfield and the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden in Springfield, home of Ted Geisel.  I should also recommend a trip to the R. Michelson galleries in Northhampton, which have the original "Don't Pigeonhole Me" sketches as well as some original Dr. Seuss work and a whole slew of other children's artists as well as photos by Leonard Nimoy and beautiful artwork from many, many others.

I admit, if this little pocket of loveliness were on the coast, I would have moved there years ago but I'm just not a mountain girl... I'm an ocean girl.  At least I can hope in my little bug and head on out there to enjoy, and you should too.

It's in the wiring....

There are three things on my "must see" this summer.  The first, the Michelangelo sketches before they left the MFA is done.  Number two: the Dead Sea Scrolls at the the Museum of Science is also now checked off.

Entering is a great quote, "None of the dead can rise up and answer our questions.  But from all they have left behind, their imperishable or slowly dissolving gear we may perhaps hear voices, which are only now able to whisper when everything else has become silent." The quote is from Bjorn Kurten, a Finnish paleontologist (and yes the They Might Be Giants Song got stuck in my head at that point - not helped the quote from Deuteronomy, "Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it...") and sets the tone for the whole exhibit.

The whole exhibit is built around a number of the finds that went with the scrolls themselves, namely the remains of day-to-day house lives that were buried along with the scrolls in the caves and such of the area.

But one thing that hit me: the foot bath.  That's right, a foot bath carved out of stone for ritual foot washing.  I think a lot about traditions mentioned in various bits of historic texts along the way and a big one is foot washing.  Keep in mind that I am Catholic educated and chose to throw my lot in with the Jewish people after lots of study, thought and discussion with all sorts of mentors along the way.  One thing that gets talked about in biblical materials is the idea of washing a guests feet.

foot bath

ritual tub

Now logically I know that it's a part of the world that is dry and dusty and when you're walking to get from here to, well, anywhere, your feet get nasty.  It's a practical thing to wash feet before entering the home to try and keep things clean.  But as I stood there, I wasn't thinking about Biblical admonishments about shaking the dust of an enemy from your feet or Jesus washing the feet of his followers or anything like that.  I was was thinking, "Perhaps my desire for a pedicure is hardwired to ancient times..." and glanced down at my neatly pedicured toes.

Yes, I can be that shallow at times.  On the other hand, the two big display points on the exhibit map were the foot bath on one side of the room and the bathtub on the other.  The bath tub wasn't a take a Saturday night bubble bath kind of thing.  It was from a religious ritual area in the caves where the scrolls and artifacts were found.  So whomever designed the exhibit had a big fixation point on those two pieces, giving them the same sort of map priority as the scrolls themselves.

There are various vessels of various importance peppered through out the exhibit, whether it's a carved jar or a goblet of some type or an ossuary used to collect the bones of the dead and be placed the family tomb.

I loved this basic utilitarian job with just a little bit of a decoration on it.  Think about the various bits and pieces of things we all have because the shape is kind of cool or the pattern is interesting.  So here's this standard storage jar from ancient days with a carving that's just kind of cool.

Hey, maybe we're not that different after all.

The story of the scrolls themselves is interesting in that a Bedouin shepherd found them while chasing a stray goat.  The people who ended up with them knew they had something, but no idea what.  In the end, through a bit of intrigue, all the scrolls ended up back together in Jerusalem.  Another odd thing about the scrolls that struck me, the night the scrolls were identified as something of serious value was the same night the UN voted to establish the state of Israel.


 The section on Masada had "potsherds" - shards of a broken pot with names written on them.  At Masada it is said that ten of the fighters were designated to kill everyone rather than surrender to the Romans.  Once that was done, one name was drawn to kill the other 9 fighters before killing himself.  The potsherds with the names on them give credit to the story.  It makes you ask yourself, what is so beyond the pale in your vision of the life, the universe and everything that would push you to killing yourself rather than accept that fate?

The scrolls are difficult to read.  In part because the scholars reassembling them during the Cold War years may have been scholars, but they weren't archivists.  They used things like scotch tape to hold pieces together, exposed them to air and sunlight as well as tobacco smoke.  I noticed the bit of Isaiah, the most commonly copied book in all the scrolls, on display (with the verse, "In the widow's mouth I was a prayer") was in the shape of the UK.  Now William Blake's "Jerusalem," as performed by Emerson Lake and Palmer, got stuck in my head.

There is a piece of the Western Wall there where you can leave a petition or prayer and it will be placed at the wall in Jerusalem.  There is the new tradition of exiting through the gift shop and then I exited to see the polarized mural.  For years I have looked at pieces of it but then it hit me: I have new, polarized lens sunglasses and put them on to see the whole thing at once for the first time.

It cemented the whole idea of a mind-blowing day at the Museum of Science for me.  In the end, I couldn't go through any other parts of the museum, not even my favorite dinosaur parts because it was too much to process.

Good thing I bought a membership on the way in and can go back again to revisit my dinosaur friends as I do like to imagine owning a pet triceratops named Spike that I could ride around and we would eat broccoli together and be best friends.

But that's for another day.....

A trip to the MFA

I love going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but there was an exhibit that I almost missed.  Through the end of the weekend, they have about 2 dozen pages from Michelangelo's sketch books on display.  The exhibit, Michelangelo Sacred and Profane, are figure studies for other works and architectural drawings for various commissions by patrons.

Because I went with Pi, I spent a lot of time laughing.  It started outside by the creepy baby heads at the entrance of the Fenway side of the museum.  When he posed by one of the sculptures, the smiles began, and it just kept rolling and growing as we went through the museum.

It has been a rough month for me as I face the reality of the mortality of my mom.  It's that theoretical "We only have a few years left...." sort of thing turned into "Oh shit, the complications from this stroke has really messed her up...."  Yesterday was a tough day and Pi came down to the nursing home/rehab center she's at with me.  The decision to go was last minute after we fought through a bunch of traffic and managed to avoid the worst of the Red Sox fans in the Fenway area.  I said, "If we find a space on the street, we'll go."

A space around the corner, ironically in front of the Gardener museum, opened up.  I also had enough quarters for the 2 hours we needed for the meter and the sun came out.  Yep, we were meant to be there.

There are plenty of reviews out there of the exhibit, so I won't bore with another, but I will say I was struck by a few things.

The first thing that hit me was the uncertainty of some of the sketches.  They were studies for bigger pieces and included things like Christ's leg drawn at different angles.  The one that struck me was the study of a horse's leg for a sculpture and the angles on it.  All I could think of was, "Wow, he didn't look at the rock and release the sculpture inside like I was always told."

See, I never really took up sculpture at any level because I was always told that whittlers shape objects to their will; however, a true artist looks at a piece and sees the sculpture inside waiting to be released.

I'm not say that he didn't do that, I'm saying that even Michelangelo needed to do his homework.  He may have looked at a block of marble and saw a horse, but he needed to make sure he did the horse justice as he released the creature.

Another thing that struck me, he drew on the back of available paper.  There was this beautiful drawing of a doorway in red chalk that he sketched on the back of a letter.  Over time, the ink from the letter bleed through and there was a really interesting result of text over the image.  There were a few pieces like that as well as the incredibly moving portrait of his dear friend as Cleopatra.

It was one of those small but important exhibits you don't really hear about until it's too late.  While it will show up in promotion and advertising, it's not an exit through the gift shop sort of merchandising show, so it quietly slips in and out without much fanfare.  Yet, it really was breath taking in a way I didn't expect and reminded me that even the best of the best are human after all.

We also wandered through the Samurai exhibit, the Blue and White exhibit and through the new contemporary wing.  My initial thoughts: "Wow, they did their best to make it feel like MoMA, didn't they."  Right down to the companion pieces to some of the ones in New York and the ICA on the other side of Boston.  Interesting stuff, but I still felt like the idea of the wing is unoriginal right down to the design of the galleries.

They do have an awesome Warhol piece in there, so that's kind of cool.

Pi and I were hungry so we decided to grab some food at one of the slightly overpriced options in the museum.  We always laugh when we're together and our meal was no exception.  When a couple that were obviously art patrons were seated next to us, Pi looked and said, "I want to buy your women," in his best John Belushi accent as a reflection of how he felt.  I may have been in suburban mom mode, but he was in Pi mode with his local band t-shirt, hat and black jeans.  He was more art student than patron... in other words, he was just Pi.

We enjoyed our meal and decided we needed desert.  On the menu was a "cookie plate" featuring chocolate chip, pb&j thumbprints and a couple of others.

Pi, reading the description, looked up at me and said, "What's a cookie plate?" and I replied, "It's one of those souvenir plates shaped like a cookie that you can bring home for an extra $5."

He lost it and began laughing.  This made me laugh.  Then he looked at me and we both started laughing again and this continued for a minute or so.  The woman at the next table looked gave us a dirty look, which set us off again.  Her husband (date, friend, whatever) looked over at me and smiled.  Again triggering another round of laughter for us that brought on a coughing fit from the asthma attack I had been fighting for a bit, which ended the laughing.

As we left, the two of us decided we need to spend a bunch of time at the MFA this summer.  It won't always be mocking the creepy baby heads.  We actually are pretty reverential when we're in there, even if we both looked at one of the pieces in blue and white and had the same reaction.  ("Oh shit, I did this wrong and it fell apart in the kiln... I know!  I'll call it a statement and act like I meant to do that!")  We didn't have to say it until there was no one else around, but we were certainly on the same wavelength.

The bottom line here would be this: life sucks at times but then throws a ray of sunlight for you to smile about; Michelangelo was human too and sometimes you need to laugh so even "important" people can remember life can be a joy as well.

How to create a writer?

I have spent a lot of time over the past 3 years trying to create writers.

Most schools do so by teaching various writing methods aligned to the common core curriculum.  Me, I do it with my favorite blank books: Moleskine, to supplement the curriculum.

Kids like cool looking blank books and I have been using Moleskines for sometime.  Last year, when I saw the ones with the Lego plate on the front, I had to have it.  Every time I pull it out to take notes, all the kids have to have one too.

Unfortunately, they're rather pricey.  Sure, I'll cough up the way too much money for something like this for me (and, if I had my druthers, I would not have a black Lego base plate on the front to blend in with the black leather cover, I would have placed a red or yellow one to stand out.... but that's me) but what kid has that kind of money for something like that? So it becomes another cool thing adults have and kids don't.

More importantly, when it comes to creating writers, I think about one of my first graders this year who has some special needs.  Like most first graders, he finds writing to be physically difficult.  Some of his small motor skill issues made holding a pencil for the full writing process (idea to first draft to correction/editing to final draft) extremely difficult.  But he's such an amazing story teller, I was worried he would stop if he didn't have assistance.

When I had to fill in for his aide on occasion early on in the year, he would struggle with writing and we finally figured out a system.  I would write his first draft in my Moleskine with my "cool pen" (my Lamy Safari fountain pen) as he dictated and he then would work from there.  I would sometimes copy his words onto regular paper for him to copy over, sometimes I'd take the pages out of my Moleskine. The ones I kept are the ones he wrote for me during his choice or free time, but the majority were for class work, so he had to keep them as part of the writing process.

His regular aide picked up on that system and continued until he eventually became OK with writing as he worked with OT and PT through the year.  He was always fascinated by my Moleskine as he loves Legos and I'm always pulling it out to make notes to myself about stories and such.

I found out last week he's moving to a neighboring community and will no longer be attending our school, so I wanted a present to encourage him to write and knew I wanted a Lego Moleskine for him; however, I knew it was too small for his writing abilities and too rich for my budget.

Call on duct tape and gorilla glue to save the day!

I have some of these marble composition note books on hand:




They have wider lines and guide lines for upper and lowercase letters to help letter formation as well as a space at the top of the page to draw an illustration.  For some kids they draw the picture and then write the story of the picture, the way writers workshop is introduced in Kindergarten and First Grade.  Older kids get lined paper where the spacing becomes smaller as motor skills improve with no illustration space.

The problem is, well, they're kind of lame looking for many kids, my student included.  (Not to mention the complete lack of Lego anything.)  So I stopped at the local craft store and picked up a couple of Duck Tape duct tape sheets, a couple of pieces of scrapbooking paper and a thing of Gorilla super glue to transform that into this:

All I did was carefully apply the duct tape sheet to the front and back covers and slowly smooth it across the cover of the book.  Then I glued used some white glue to place the scrap book paper on the inside cover and slowly work that across, trimming the excess along the edge when it was in place.  On the back cover, before applying duct tape and paper, I took a piece of 3/8" elastic and gorilla glued it to the top of the cover, about 1/3 of the way down and, with the book closed, brought it around the front and cut it 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the back and glued it in place, waited for the glue to set and then applied the duct tape.  With the glue set and the duct tape applied, I could then carefully move the elastic to open the back cover, gorilla glued a length of red ribbon for a book mark, again, the tail is about 1/3 of the way down, then glued the paper to the back cover.  Once things were dry, I closed up the book and gorilla glued a Lego base plate I had on the front.

To be honest, I've done this in the past by glueing pleather onto composition books for older kids with OT/PT issues that needed larger lines but didn't want to be embarrassed using "baby" comp books.  They got the support they needed with a cool looking blank book.  But the duct tape sheets are easier and cover more cleanly (in my opinion).  

As back to school sales raise their ugly heads in a couple of weeks, composition books go on sale for dirt cheap.  For less than $5, you can custom make one of these puppies for the kid in your life.  To be honest, if I had a roll of red or green duct tape, I might have used it on the binding for some contrast just for fun.  The sky's the limit here.

My little buddy will be moving on, but maybe one day I'll see his first novel on the best seller list and think, "I knew he had that story in him, I'm so glad he let it out to share with the world."

My reaction to Cubby's Tees non-apology

(For what I'm reacting to, this is Cubby Tee's non-apology for pulling their Blackhawks "Chicago Stronger" shirt.)

I am a Boston fan and I make no bones about it.  Like Chicago, Philly and New York, we Boston fans live and die by our teams.  I like that you are like our own "Sully's Tees" who were fans that made fan shirts that are snarky but our true fan sentiments.

I also admire the grist of your fans is similar to ours.  It takes a set of huge, clanking brass ones for the lead singer of the Tossers - a fine Chicago Irish Punk band - to stand on the stage of the Middle East, look at my Bruins jersey and, with his Chicago softened Irish brogue announce, "Here's to the best team in the NHL, the Chicago Blackhawks and you Bruins fans can fuck off!"

That night my son turned to me and said, "I hope we have a Bruins/Hawks battle for the cup."

It is the wish the two of us have held onto for dear life over the past two months.  To me, there's little better in hockey than original 6 battles like the one we're in now.

Yep, Bostonians pretty much respect a fan that passionate (unless they're a Yankees fan, with the exception of 2001, then they can suck it).  Since that night, I've pretty much had Flatfoot 56's "Winter in Chicago" stuck in my head.  Actually, I've had the line "it's winter in Chicago and the Hawks are on tonight, so it's alright" while the rest of the song is sort mumble mumble mumble Lakeshore Drive mumble mumble....

(BTW if you haven't checked out either of these fine Chicago Irish punk bands, then shame on you!  Flatfoot's pipers are some of the best I've heard after years of listening to all kinds of Celtic music and I will always love the Tossers for playing "I'll Tell Me Ma" for "Miscreant's mom in the back of the room....")

Enough about Chicago, let me see if I can explain to you about "Boston Strong"and my gut reactions to both the "Toronto Stronger" and "Chicago Stronger" messages.

In that dark, dark week where a peaceful event celebrating the triumph of the human spirit was horribly marred, a dark gash was ripped through the very core of Boston.  To "run Boston" is more than to run a marathon, it's a high standard that runners dream about.  For runners like me, we dream about "running Boston" the way that 7 year old kid stepping up to the plate in Little League dreams of stepping up to the plate in the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded and 2 outs in the World Series to win it all for their team.

Yeah, the Grande Dame of marathons, the Boston Marathon, is really that special.

So those bomb blasts that destroyed and changed the lives of the average people who had that moment in life to feel like that elite athlete was something that just can't be fully described.  For the first time since 2001, I finally understood how my friends in NY felt on that horrible fall day and they understood what it was like to be a bystander from a distance.

It doesn't matter where "Boston Strong" came from as a saying, it has become Boston's motto.  Even the FCC understood David Ortiz's utterance of "This is our fucking city!" and chose not to fine MLB or networks who did not censor that moment.

Right now we have our hopes pinned on the Bruins.  They are the rainbow in the sky at the end of the storm right now.  It's that odd foreshadowing the President spoke of at the Mass of Healing in Boston after the bombings when he alluded, to the chagrin of Chicago fans, that there would be duck boat parades in Boston.  The World Series is too far away and the Celtics choked the way most of us knew they would.  When the best the Pats have to offer is Tebow, well, is it any wonder why this city is pinning their hopes for sports redemption on the B's?

Most of us who are real B's fans will tell you that, up until 2 years ago, they were the red-headed bastard step child of Boston sports.  A few years back when they flew the team flags of Boston over the state house, the B's flag was not there (but the fucking Revolution had their flag flown).  That night the B's went back into action after the bombing and Renee Rancourt took to the ice to sing the anthem, something amazingly special happened - Boston sent one loud and clear message to the world: we're hurt but we're still here.  The Bruins truly became Boston's team after years of neglect.

We need them, we need this win and we need this promise that life will be normal again.

So why the objection to the Toronto or Chicago Stronger?  Well, I don't know if I made it clear enough of how this isn't a sports slogan even though it is used in a sports context right now.  Boston needs that victory to help us move on as we keep healing.  Remember when you're still young and invincible and you have that one kid you know that's your age die?  How, while you're still reeling, someone makes that one crack that makes you want to punch them in the face.  You know what I mean, that crack about how the good Lord doesn't give us more than we can handle or Divine will or something that makes you want to say, "What G0d do you pray to that does this because I'm 'strong enough to handle' it?"

That's what those shirts mean to us. We're still hurting here and it's too soon.  Yes we wave a "Boston Strong" flag, usually by a hero or victim of the bombing before the game.  Yes it's our arena chant for now.  But give it some time.  Maybe after we drink champagne from Lord Stanley's cup and have a duck boat parade or two we can just call you assholes and be done with it.

Until then, give it a rest rather than try to call no harm, no foul.  Realize you just kicked someone when they were down and, "Sorry man, I had no idea," then offer your hand to pull us up, give us a bro hug and offer to buy us a beer while we move on.

Oh yeah, and may the best team (the Bruins) win.