Copley Square April 15, 2013

Marathon Set up on the Friday before

Jen and I worked two doors down from the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street for years -- eons even. Before that, we worked 2 blocks further up the street across from the Prudential Center.

At first I just loved working on Marathon Day. There was a real fab festival feel on the job and in the streets.

Michael, the company owner, always sprung for a big buffet lunch and was cool with only getting half a day’s work out of us. Around 11:30 AM, we’d all trundle up to the huge second floor accounting offices, fill our plates and sit in the enormous, floor to ceiling windows overlooking Boylston Street. We'd kibitz and applaud while watching the wheelchair racers and runners go by. I'd always get choked up by the Denali sized efforts and determination of the runners and wheelers with the happy throngs cheering them on. Beautiful. Just tremendous. I always felt silly for getting teary eyed and would head back to the basement press-room.

Eventually the crowds, the hurdle filled complicated commute and the drunken revelers were too much for me and I began taking the day off.

Massacre of the Innocents -- Rubens

And then, a year and a half ago, I took a job in another part of town. A few months later, Jen followed me.

Thank Bast!

From HuffPo:

The deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon Monday has left at least three people dead -- including an 8-year-old boy -- and more than 130 others wounded.

From the AP:

One of Boston's biggest annual events, the race winds up near Copley Square, not far from the landmark Prudential Center and the Boston Public Library. It is held on Patriots Day, which commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution, at Concord and Lexington in 1775.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, Alisdair Conn, chief of emergency services, said: "This is something I've never seen in my 25 years here ... this amount of carnage in the civilian population. This is what we expect from war."

"We just don't know whether it's foreign or domestic," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

The attack may have been timed for maximum carnage: The four-hour mark is typically a crowded time near the finish line because of the slow-but-steady recreational runners completing the race and because of all the friends and relatives clustered around to cheer them on.
A woman who was a few feet from the second bomb, Brighid Wall, 35, of Duxbury, said that when it exploded, runners and spectators froze, unsure of what to do. Her husband threw their children to the ground, lay on top of them and another man lay on top of them and said, "Don't get up, don't get up."

a calm, peaceful image to meditate on

So far I’ve heard from all but one of my friends who work in Copley Square or were participating in the Marathon. I’ll untense a smidge after I hear from Jeff.

The folks investigating do NOT know who was responsible for this massacre of innocents so, PLEASE, can the rush to blame. The terrorist(s) may be American. They may be foreign. It’s not known yet. All I know is that the far right and the far left of the blogosphere are blaming Obama. ‘the fuck? No, don’t tell me the rationale. I really don’t want to enter that fevered, fantasy swamp.

My immediate expressive and oh so articulate reactions to my friends and family?

How fucking DARE whoever the pathetic excuse for a train wrecked, asswipe who pulled this heinous travesty!

and

Fuck this fucking shitheaded, brain rotted violence bullshit!

From The Green Miles:  

‘I'm going to the Marathon next year, because fuck whoever did this.’

I end with my eloquent cousin Gary words:

‘May Karma punish those behind this.’