Again, Poor Boston

As I feel rather shaken by what has been going on in and around Boston, I can imagine how my Boston readers must be feeling!

Keep safe, everyone.

I'm having one of those days where I snarl at the television. I made myself go to the gym, and some genius of a British journalist declared over the gym television that Watertown is best known as the location of Harvard University.

"No, that's Cambridge, you moron," I said aloud.

And again I thought about the nice parts of my two years in Boston, and for the first time in years recalled going to MIT on a double date. Yes, that's what the nicest part of my Boston life was like: double-dates to MIT, films at Harvard, St. Patrick's Day in Jamaica Plain with Boston Girl, Sunday morning hot chocolate on Brattle Street... It's such a beautiful place...

Anyway, I'm gutted for Boston, and the people who were killed or otherwise hurt, and the people who loved them. I'm sorry the suspect died in custody because there has been too much violent death in Boston as it is and of course he was one of the few people who could explain WHY.

I'll write later today. Right now all I can think about is Boston and the craziness of evil.

Update: Uh oh. I saw the very first hint of "poor, lonely foreign student." Well, let me tell you something. When I wasn't hanging with my friends, I was very lonely and depressed as a foreign student in Boston. I had culture shock and very possibly academic burnout and a lot of disappointment.

I knew almost no Catholics who were Catholic like me---and no other Canadians. I got mad when people said stuff like "Canada is only an independent country because we let you stay that way." I got mad when people acted like voting Democrat was the Only True Catholic Way. I got mad when these Democrats went on and on about America being responsible for everything that happened in the whole wide world, not because I thought they were masochistic, but because I thought they were imperialist control-freaks.  The one advantage I had over other foreign students was that I knew English perfectly; on the flip side, I didn't have a cool accent. Canadians, who sound American to a lot of Americans, can come across just as slightly off Americans. Canadians hate that.

Did I have, perhaps, an eenie weenie chip on my shoulder? You bet.

But it never occurred to me to blow up people. Never, not once.  

Instead I went home, went to a doctor, and took anti-depressants. I wrote a few books. I discovered the meaning to my Boston sojourn.

There is no excuse for the killing of innocents. None. None. None.

Update 2: Well, now I've found out those guys have been living in the States for years and years!