Hey everyone.
Anger. Grief. Frustration. Rage. Sorrow.
Been cycling through those for the last hour or so, ever since my wife shouted down stairs to check Twitter.*
We’re all OK — thanks for the expressions of concern for Boston Balloon-Juicers in John’s thread. [Anne Laurie — check in, please.] I live close to the Marathon route and about 2-3 miles from the finish line, and you can hear the sirens going back and forth, but no one in my house is fit enough to take part in the event, and we didn’t stir ourselves to watch up in Coolidge Corner either. (Some benefits to sloth there are, Yoda says.)
I just had a walk with my son and his friend ninja-ing behind and around me. It was astonishing. There were lots of people on the streets between my house and the little park and pond we often stroll around. Everyone — and I really do mean just about everybody — was walking with their heads down, peering at a smart-phone screen. I’ve never seen anything like it; there was a kind of hunger for news, for connection, for … perhaps a reminder that the person holding the phone was both still here and connected to others in town. I was doing the same, reading the comments on John’s post. When I got to the end, I hit refresh and read the next twenty, a cycle that took me through the half hour walk.
Despite the head-in-screen hunger, folks were eager to make eye-contact. Boston isn’t quite New York in its studied avoidance of direct gaze, but we’re not by reputation exactly the most outgoing, hey-shucks-how-are-ya-stranger kind of place either. But today, we were nodding at each other, saying a couple of words of greeting, even being welcomed, as I was at one corner, to eavesdrop openly on a phone conversation one young woman was having, describing the way the explosion looked from where she saw it — a tube of smoke straight up, then blossoming out. Her two friends were with her, and we kind of ducked and shrugged at each other, and I just listened while someone narrated the event.
I stopped to talk briefly with two runners from the event, a couple. They had both made it most of the way, but were stopped, of course, as soon as word of the bombs passed, and were walking to the apartment belonging to the female half of the pair. I asked them if they were OK, and they were glad of an excuse to stop and repeat (perhaps to themselves) that they were, that they’d turned safely away from the disaster. I asked them if they needed help. It was kind of a stupid question on the face of it, as they were both hale and walking towards the comfort of home — but for all that I winced inside as I fumbled the question, they seemed glad of being asked, though indeed there was nothing they needed, at least not that I had to give.
The two of them were moving strongly. The woman was wrapped in one of those metallized blankets they hand out, and she looked a little more bent over than her companion, but it was clear to me that they had pretty much run a marathon and were doing OK. But there faces were grim, fallen — nothing like you see in my part of town every year but this one. Usually, even the folks who really strain across the line get that “I did it!” look. This year, not a chance.
I’m sad as hell, of course, especially as the expected-but-hoped-against reports of deaths as well as injuries are coming in. And I’m enraged: how the fuck dare some assholes do this to these people, to my town, to all of us.
I have no idea who did this, of course, and I’m not going to begin to speculate. I am going to note, with my usual historian’s reflex, that the disruption of civil society by thugs who crave notice and power is not a unidirectional process. We’ve dealt with fuckers like this in the past — see the 19th century anarchist tradition, or the abortion bombers, the inept Weather folk, or McVeigh and his penumbra of deadly idiots. The Europeans have had it worse. Enemies internal or external may seek to derange us. We get to decide the timing and thoroughness of their failure.
Last notes: best news I’ve had so far, beyond that of family and nearby friends being OK is that all my current graduate students check in fine. I hope the same is true for all those close to you (and me!). And my deepest sympathy and regard for those caught up in the blast, their families, loved ones, and their circles of community.
*Oh brave new world and all that. It literally did not occur to either of us to check the actual TV until a friend came over to drop off her son for a play-date and wanted to check the up-to-the-second stuff. It truly never crossed my mind. I think back to when Challenger blew up, and the speed with which I got the ‘tube up, and its one more measure of how swiftly our lines of communication and connection have shifted.
Image: Theodore Robinson, Beacon Street, Boston, 1884
minutemaid
Jesus titty fucking christ on a stick. Can you gloom porn addicts at least let the blood coagulate before engaging in wild speculation.
KIlkee
Would like to wildly speculate on significance of other bomb at JFK Library. Interested parties please respond here. KTHX.
Arclite
Marathons are some of the most positive, happy events I’ve ever attended or participated in. The runners are truly happy to be there, and the audience encourages and cheers each runner. There’s none of the usual partisan stuff that happens at other sporting events. It’s a true celebration of athleticism and sportsmanship.
My guess is that it was chosen bc it’s just hard to secure a 26 mile course.
Terrible.
Xecky Gilchrist
@minutemaid: you didn’t read the post. Piefilter.
JPL
@minutemaid: what’s your point … a guy is suffering and you can show no empathy… fuck off
Violet
Glad you and yours are safe, Tom. Scary when something like this happens so close to you.
Cris (without an H)
@minutemaid:
Huh. Are you talking about the part where Tom said
or this part
or this one
I guess that is pretty wild
Arclite
It’s interesting that this falls on Tax due day. I think there’s a strong chance this date was chosen for that fact by the perps of this crime.
Yutsano
@minutemaid: Oh Durf, you sad sick Canadian troll. I see only one individual expressing glee here, and it ain’t me. I wouldn’t even wish the fleas of a thousand camels on you out of compassion for the fleas.
Cris (without an H)
And as far as that goes, the TV has become a terrible place for up-to-the-second stuff. With a published piece on the web (be it blog post, tweet, or whatever), you can leave it there and add updates as they come in. On TV, you’re in real time, and if no updates are coming in, you have to fill the air with something. So it ends up having concerned-looking anchors talking about how much they don’t know.
Gex
@Arclite: Not just tax day. Boston. Where the Tea Party first started calling themselves teabaggers until they realized we grabbed on to that readily in order to laugh at them.
This also smells just like the Olympics bombings.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Cris (without an H): So it ends up having concerned-looking anchors talking about how much they don’t know.
Sometimes by making things up.
Tone in DC
Tom, glad that you’re okay.
I am still trying to deal with the fact that the Newtown families were ten feet away from one of the explosions.
schrodinger's cat
@Gex: Its also Patriots Day a state holiday.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
BPD have found and are surrounding a Penske rental truck in Roxbury.
Boston-area cellphone towers are being shut down (to prevent possible remote detonations of any other IEDs out there), so if you’re trying to get in touch with someone there, that might be the reason.
Also just saw two F14s fly over Cambridge, presumably on their way to Logan.
BPD is also saying that the explosion at the JFK library ‘might be related’. Bldg has been evacuated.
aimai
Glad you guys are ok, Tom. People are texting me from all over the country and I’m slowly texting people too. The odds are that any one person you know is probably ok, but still we need to reach out and hug each other online or on the phone. My sister-in-law who lives around the corner from you says she heard the explosion but was notified of what had happened by her sister texting her from texas. I agree with you about the way information gets to us shifting drastically between Challenger, 9/11 and now.
Tom Levenson
@aimai: And you too. I knew you were safe from the last thread; good to hear your (digital) voice.
Phoenix_rising
We’re all with you, Tom.
Is this the country we want to be? (link to the song that leapt to mind, mine at least.)
mai naem
JFK library people are saying it was an accidental fire. I was listening to XM POTUS to a political show. They had on a reporter who was supposed to be talking about immigration and the host didn’t know anything so she told the host that twitter was going off about a bomb at the marathon and how strange the reporter thought it was that CNN/FOX/MSNBC had no coverage. The host made a flip comment about how if it was on twitter it did not mean that it had happened and the reporter let her know that AP and Reuters was reporting it. Just odd kind of coverage.
PurpleGirl
@Arclite: It’s Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts. The marathon is always run on Patriot’s Day. In 1976, it coincided with Easter weekend and I was in Boston for a Star Trek convention that weekend.
Mystical Chick
Thanks for the post, Tom. Glad you all are okay (and you too, Anne) – just a horrific event. I’m sure not a one of us can wrap our head around why someone would do this.
Geez psychopath, if you’re pissed, go shoot your damn self in the foot or something but FFS, leave innocent people the hell out of your disease.
PurpleGirl
@aimai: Om September 11th, I became the connection point for several people in other parts of the country and other parts of NYC because I still have a landline. It was strange to be the connection.
minutemaid
@Cris (without an H): Yea, I like totally read the “I have no idea…not going to speculate” just before he goes on to say “disruption of civil society by thugs who crave notice and power is not a unidirectional process. We’ve dealt with fuckers like this in the past — see the 19th century anarchist tradition, or the abortion bombers, the inept Weather folk, or McVeigh and his penumbra of deadly idiots. The Europeans have had it worse. Enemies internal or external may seek to derange us. We get to decide the timing and thoroughness of their failure.”
So yea…that is like totally ‘no idea not going to speculate’
Sigh…the stupid it burns.
zz
F14s retired a while ago… F15s based out of Otis Afb on Cape [email protected]Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
kc
Glad you’re okay, Tom.
Felanius Kootea
Good to know that you weren’t physically affected. The marathon route goes past my old place on Beacon Street just before Coolidge Corner. This has really hit home for me.
Edited
JGabriel
Thanks for checking in, Tom. Glad to know you and your family are okay, or at least not physically injured.
Mnemosyne
@Gex:
G and I had the same thought. FWIW, my first thought about OKC was also that it was domestic, because no foreign terrorist was going to bother to hit the middle of nowhere like that.
I have the same feeling about Boston not having the same resonance for a foreign terrorist as it would for a domestic terrorist, but I could still be wrong.
The Fat Kate Middleton
My much loved niece, she who I held minutes after she was born, lives on the Boston Marathon route – and her brother who lives in Marblehead – are fine. Thanks be.
gogol's wife
I’m glad you’re okay. This is really horrible. I feel so bad for Boston.
Kristine
Glad you and yours are okay, Tom.
handsmile
Glad to read that Boston-area Juicers and their friends/family are so far physically OK on this cruel day.
Checking home phone messages, I’m so happy to report that my s-i-l and niece who were running the Marathon have now returned safely to their home in central Mass.!
greenergood
@KIlkee: JFK library? double whammy for RW nutcases: JFK, obviously, and a LIBRARY, i.e. location of free information not necessarily about Jebus riding a dinosaur. So sorry about marathon dead and injured; thanks that BJers in the Boston area have been spared. Waiting with bated breath to find out on whom the Secret Service will blame this one. Happy Patriot’s Day … not
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
It depends on what the terrorist is going for. 9/11 = shock and awe. But if you’re really trying to terrorize a population with the idea that “no one is safe,” targeting more mundane events like a marathon, in more mundane locations like Boston or Oklahoma City, would probably be even more effective at driving home the point.
Tom M
Glad to know you’re okay, Tom. My son and his friend were in Prudential Center at time of first explosion. He lives in the South End and we walked all around there last week with him.
Randy P
Philly is kind of edgy, for no particular reason. Saw a much bigger police presence than usual around the train station, including machine guns.
I hear security is up in NYC too.
R-Jud
Just catching up on all this now, at 1:15 BDT. I qualified this year and couldn’t go due to health issues and the cost of travel. I was running this morning in tears because I wasn’t in Boston today. This is so, so awful. I hope they catch the perpetrators immediately.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Yes but, frankly, only domestic terrorists (or ones that are geographically nearby, like the IRA to London) think like that. And, also frankly, domestic terrorists are usually the only ones who can keep up a campaign like that, because they can blend in with the population. It’s a civil war type of maneuver, not an “attack the big guy” maneuver.
I can’t think of any situation where a terror group successfully pulled off that kind of campaign in a country that was foreign to the terror group (again, the IRA all spoke English and could blend in with the crowd, so calling them “foreigners” to England would be a major stretch IMO). Maybe someone else can think of one.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, since this is a calm discussion thread — unlike 9/11, this is the kind of situation when the Red Cross will really, really need blood donations from all over the country, because Boston is going to use up a whole lot of the current supply. I’m going to start looking for blood donation opportunities tomorrow.
nellcote
Thanks for the post Tom. As always, you’re a calming influence for my mind.
Ramalama
The mood you describe yesterday was the same in Boston & Cambridge the few days after 9/11. And I spent the next couple of days after 911 at Nantasket Beach where groups of people just walked at low tide, nodding to everyone else, the silence from a normally busy sky notable.