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.

Ukelele Lady

Amanda Palmer really inspired me and when I ran into Mr. Music a couple of weeks ago, I saw this candy apple red Makala dolphin bridge soprano and had to have it. 

A few sea horse stickers to make it mine and it wasn't long before I could hack out "Ukelele Anthem," "Changes in Latitudes" and "Adventure Time."   She was right when she said it only takes about an hour to learn how to play. 

While bar chords still vex me (really only some do, others are fine), I'm having a great time tooling around on it.  

I'll probably never front a punk band singing song about how all college students look the same with a cockney accent.  I'll probably never be mistaken for an underground icon.  But I can sit and play and make myself smile and remember that there's something magical about that little bit of wood and plastic.

Being a Boston sports fan (or how I explained DNA to a 5 yr old)

The Bruins were on the ice in Toronto taking practice after their 2nd game shellacking by the Leafs when a kid in a Kindergarten room and I had a conversation about the upcoming game.  He predicted a shut-out.  I predicted a 6-1 Bruins win because Toronto is that hungry to get past the first round.

The final score of game 3 was 5-2 Bruins.

Yesterday he looked at me and said, "Ms. H, you had the right answer but the wrong number sentence."

This is how he viewed it: 6+1=7, 5+2=7; therefore, I had the right answer (7) BUT the wrong number sentence.  He then asked me a serious question.  He asked if it was possible he was a hockey fan before he was born because he felt like he had always been a Bruins fan.

I told him my theory that being a Boston sports fan is genetic.  It's written into our DNA which is something you get from your parents that helps make you you.  He thought for a minute and said, "That makes sense."

He asked my prediction for tonight's game.  I thought for a moment and said, "The Bruins win by a goal in OT."

He predicted the Bruins would win 100-1.

Yep, he's a Bruins fan.

I often refer back to a quote I saw on the wall of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  It read, "It was as if something took me by the hand and whispered, 'I am baseball, come with me.'"  I think than an angel whispered that in my ear before I was born.  Maybe that's why I stood in the playpen chanting my favorite player's name over and over when he was at the plate (even if it came out "Eddie Soo!  Eddie Soo!" instead of Eddie Bressoud.)

In all seriousness, I do believe being a sports fan is somewhat genetic.  Why is it two people from the same family are so radically different in their perspectives?  The way one can be a total nerd that locks themselves inside to read comic books, play video games and is into sci-fi and anime while their sibling is the kid outside playing every sport (well) and can instantly calculate batting averages, ERAs or other complex statistical analysis of players?  It is something that psychologists study all the time, but I have to believe that there is something written in invisible ink on our DNA code that allows us to be interested in certain things.

For example, why is it I follow the Sox and Bruins but not the Celtics or Pats?  Why is it one of my siblings has the full-blown Boston sports fan genes and another has barely a polite but passing interest in sports at all while the rest fall in all shades in between?

So the next time you look at a sibling or relative and wonder where the hell they're coming from, ask yourself this, did perhaps they get some genetic trait - dominant or recessive - from someone way back when in the family tree... or maybe they are just an apple that didn't roll too far from one side.

Perhaps, like me and my kindergarten friend, some angel whispered in our ears and took us by the hand to lead us to the sports we love.

Last night, Amanda Palmer spoke to me (or why I wear red sparkly shoes)

It's true, last night Amanda Palmer spoke to me.  Of course she also spoke to the rest of the ballroom full of people at the Grub Street Boston event, but in many ways it felt like she spoke to me directly.

I'm not talking about my Q&A question about how can we teachers and writers can keep sparking creativity in the children for whom we are responsible.  I'm talking about her whole premise about how creative people are the ones that, at some point, notice the dots and start to connect them.  We are the ones who then get excited and want to share our observations and then are often the ones told to be quiet because now is not the time.  She used a metaphor of creative types alone in the garrett starving and struggling while the bustling marketplace is going on downstairs just outside the front door of our building.  She spoke of how "new" media is like yelling out the window to the market place to invite up friends and have them bring friends and sharing your work that way.

I jotted down her words: "Once you share your art, it's not about you any more."

There were points during her talk when I wanted to yell, "Get out of my head bitch!" but I didn't.  I listened instead because she was speaking to me.

But, more importantly, she was speaking to my sons, who sat next to me in the ballroom.  One is a writer, one is a musician and artist.  They both have had struggles in this world because they are the kids yelling "look at this, the patterns are emerging when you hold things at this angle!"  They are the ones being told to be quiet, this isn't the time.

The one who was listening the hardest, hanging on her every word was the one I have the deepest concerns about: my Pi guy.

Yesterday was a day where time, which has the job to keep everything from happening at once, failed to do that.

Pi and I have taken the Boston Marathon bombings hard in our own ways.

Last week I had my cathartic moment at the Dropkick Murphy concert.  For me, two weeks of holding back tears and pushing down the fear of everything came to a head when the Boston Police Gaelic Column took to the stage.  I felt the tears streaming down my face and, for the first time in two long weeks, I didn't try to stop them.  When the Murphys took to the stage and sang "For Boston" with them, I screamed the words while I jumped up and down and cried.  I cried through the next three numbers, particularly when the Irish step dancers took to the stage and I thought of a 6 year old girl who had just started step dancing lessons facing the challenge of life without her leg now.  The tears and the screaming were my release valve and I could finally breathe.

I know Pi was still struggling when I looked at the artwork he created this week.  I will say this, when I got home from school Friday and saw the image of a skater carrying his board that had "Keep Calm" written on the deck, it blew me away and I knew he was close to breathing again.

Yesterday was the first time I felt like Pi was breathing again.  We started by making cookies for our friends on the Roxy's Grill Cheese truck and the Mei Mei Street Kitchen truck and delivered them to them during the food truck throw down.  We stood in lines, we ate food and we voted for our friends before deciding to walk through Faneuil Hall to see if there were any free comic books at Newbury Comics.  Stopping in at Build a Bear, we mad bears, almost got thrown out of the store for putting pleather chaps on Rainbow Hug bear (seriously... who the hell thought pleather chaps were appropriate clothing item for your build a bear bear AND thought it was a good item when there was a Rainbow Hug bear in stock and people who act like 10 year olds?)

It was a day of laughing and breathing, so having it end with Amanda Palmer was fabulous.  It was the first time in almost 3 weeks that the day felt normal.


When the Q&A session started, he hesitated.  He looked and whispered, "I have a million questions, how do I pick one?"  He did ask her about what do you do to be heard.  She gave him great advice.  It wasn't the question he thought or meant to ask, but he felt great.

After we dropped his brother off at his apartment and were heading home it struck him and he asked, "What do I do if Amanda Palmer actually shows up at my spot outside the Fenway T stop after a game to listen to me?"

I thought for a second and replied, "Ask her to join you."

He nodded.

I could see him connecting dots in his head in that moment.  Amanda's words from earlier in the night struck me: "The impulse to connect the dots and share it makes you an artist."  I taught my kids that lesson through out their lives.  It's the lesson I give my students.  I know people tell me that I should be grown up about working with kids in school but I really do believe my job is not to teach them to conform so they pass the tests.  My job is to warp their little minds the same way guys like Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury and so many others warp minds.  It's a lot easier to see the dots if your thinking is reformed from a linear view to an organic view.

Last week when the kids at school asked why I was wearing red sparkly sneakers I replied, "They make me smile and that makes me happy."

Most of them could understand that sentiment.  I'd like to think it gave some of them, particularly my 5th graders who do worry about fitting in, permission to take that chance and wear sparkly shoes, draw a lion, play the ukelele or whatever makes them smile and be happy, in spite of knowing the rest of the world expects of you.

Last night Amanda Palmer spoke to me and I am a richer person for it.

Sitting here in Limbo....

I fell asleep watching "Project Runway" (really, they cut Daniel?) and flipped to the news as I fell asleep on the couch... again.  Around 1:00-1:15 am or so I woke up to the sound of a siren buzzing past on the Mass Pike and the voices on the TV began to register: there was a major police action happening a few miles from my house.

My first reaction: fear.  I quietly crept upstairs to see if my 21 year old son was sleeping.  He was.  Had he been awake, I would have told him to get dressed and we would have driven to a family member's home on the South Shore.  So I crept back downstairs and called my husband and told him I was scared.

My husband is a good man and he stayed on the phone with me for an hour.  Yes he had to walk into an office bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Yes there was nothing he could do outside of talk to me.  Yes he was just as powerless as I was, but he was there and suddenly cowering under the blankets with a death grip on the cat didn't seem like a necessary thing to do anymore.

He pointed out that if the police were telling people not to stop for anyone and these guys had carjacked someone, then exposing ourselves to get to the relative safety 20 miles south was not necessarily a good idea.  He was right.

What he didn't say was me driving at night on little to no sleep is a bad combination and there are people who have witnessed why this is a bad idea and have (fortunately) lived to tell the tale.

As tired as I thought I was, the poor news anchor on one of the Boston station kept making gaffes that couldn't help but make me laugh and wish someone would bring her a cup of coffee or let her take a nap.  By the time I fell asleep around 4:30 this morning, I had slipped back into an ice cream sandwich eating angry woman... or so I thought.

Being ticked off about being stuck inside on a beautiful spring day with no half and half, no bacon and no cookies (but plenty of Guinness from the other night - so there's a bright spot) was nothing compared to a stupid tweet from an elected official.

My friends are reporting about armored enforcement folks knocking on their doors to make sure they're OK as they do door-to-door sweeps.  Friends in the neighborhoods being evacuated are checking in via social media so we all know they're OK.  Once again I'm giving thanks and wondering how this is happening here when I see this:

Is this asshole serious?

Well Rep. Bell, as a Bostonian that was scared but found my balance and center I say this:

Bite Me

If the son of a bitch had shown up on my doorstep, I suspect the police who are TRAINED to use an AR-15 would have been right behind him.  I know how to shoot and I'm a damn good shot but I never once wished last night, even in my darkest hour, that I had a gun.

I'm from Boston, I don't need a stinking gun.  I'm also educated and have something called common sense (you may have heard of that and I don't mean the pamphlet by Thomas Paine) to know that if you shoot a maniac wired with explosives, you're going down as well unless you're a sniper and can pick him off from a safe distance.

I know that the kick of an AR-15 would do more damage to me than it would to him because, again, not trained on that kind of weapon.  You think it's easy for a civilian to use an assault weapon?  May I refer you to a semi-realistic scene from one of my favorite movies, "True Lies."  There is one point where Arnold puts an Uzi in the hands of his still stunned wife and directs her on how to use it.  She steps forward, starts to shoot and realizes she can't control the weapon.  That, sir, is how most people would handle any assault weapon - with fear, trepidation and not the results they were expecting.

In fact, most people carrying any weapon would handle it the same way I would an assault weapon: with fear, loathing and bungling.

Now had you suggested I wished I had a .45 or some such... perhaps.  I haven't shot one in almost 30 years and I know I tend to flinch when I do shoot (thus I aim for the chest and know I'll probably get the target in the face) but then I would also have to process the taking of another human life.  Unlike most folks who tend to judge and act as if the Creator was cast in their image rather than the other way around, the taking of another's life does not interest me.

A more worth fantasy would be taking the Boston bomber, putting him on the starting line at Hopkinton and giving him a 10 second head start with a full pack of marathoners behind him.  Mowing him down with an AR-15 is cowardly and lazy.

So yes, I will continue to jump every time I hear a Statie's siren on the Mass Pike for a bit.  I will sulk that I am inside on a beautiful day instead of going for a run or riding my bike on a day because a coward who thinks violence is the answer.  Instead I will make cookies, play with the cats and laugh with my son at the sheer ridiculousness of life, the universe and everything.

Understand that I am #Bostonstrong.  I am not a coward and I don't need a gun.  I have a that is set up in such a way I should never need one.  Should I chose to move to Syria, Israel, Bosnia, Kabul, Johannesburg or any number of cities in this world, we'll talk.  Being trained in use of and owning an AR-15 would make sense then, but not here.

Not in Boston.

And certainly not when I have well trained military and law enforcement officials in place to take care of this stuff for me.

Because #Bostonstrong is more than a hashtag, it is what Bostonians are made of: piss and vinegar with a big enough heart to tip the scales to make us some of the best people on earth and don't you ever forget that simple fact.