Friday, April 28th, 2023
Boston, MA: A high, sustained amount of Satanism!
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Friday began rather normally, especially for us. We have established a pattern that appears to be threatening to turn into a trend when we travel: We'll get up, go get a bagel for breakfast, and it will turn out to be far and away one of the worst things I've ever eaten. It happened in Chicago, with a bagel at at Dunkin Donuts that was like trying to chew a shoe, and it happened at this local coffee place in Boston with a bagel that was greasy, tasted unpleasant, and fought back when you tried to chew it, so tough was it. The only difference was that at this place in Boston, which shall remain nameless, we paid nearly $40 for the privilege of sitting there with our two coffees and our inedible bagels. I've had exponentially better coffee and bagels at numerous places in Greenville. Hell, I've had better k-cup coffee and bagels from the grocery store than I had at this place.
However... while their coffee was bad and their bagels were worse, it was at this coffee shop that we realized something else was... amiss... in Boston. The first sign of trouble was a news crew was setting up outside.
The second sign of trouble was this truck hauling an electronic billboard around with its message about afterschool Satan clubs. How curious, we thought. How unusual, even more so than two other customers in the coffee shop wearing sweatshirts that identified them as being part of the St. Louis Legion of the Satanic Temple.
Even more so than the woman, in stereotypical businesswoman garb, riding the elevator down at our hotel that morning with two sullen goth girls who were trying too hard in tow. They were smeared with pentagrams and the rest of the accoutrements you expect from teenagers who've only just learned the world is bitter and remain unaware of the fact that everybody else knows it too and has for years. In the lobby the woman told them to have fun, have a good day, don't go home with strangers, and when they were done take the train over to their auntie's house.
Then we headed over to the headquarters of the Christian Science church a couple of blocks away. We'd heard about their "Maparium," a giant stained glass globe you can go walk around in. Unfortunately, we ended up not having time to see it.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which we could not tour, we think, because the first lady of South Korea or the ambassador's wife or someone, got there first. There were limos out front with the South Korean flag, and placards in the windshield that said "Spouse." We learned that night on the news that the South Korean president had been in town.
By the time we swung back through en route to the opening presentations of the conference, the protesters had gathered. We would spend the rest of the trip, because we could see this intersection from our window, periodically looking out to check and see who was out protesting what. It was also on the news that night that we learned about the Satanic Temple's big to-do, while we learned about the Proud Boys riding in to join the Christians on reddit. Various videos of them getting lambasted while riding the Green Line of the T kept popping up there.
And because levels of Satanism in Boston remained elevated for the rest of our trip, I'm going to go ahead and pile all the rest of my photos into this reply. We were so busy with the conference the rest of the time that we didn't get to get out for all that much picture-taking before we had to leave.
Saturday, April 29th, 2023
Parts of the North End reminded me very much of London.
The Irish Potato Famine memorial.
We had a very good dinner at this place, and we also had a chance to have a good laugh about memories of my mother. Toward the end of her life my mother went blind, and in the years leading up to that she had a great deal to say about dim lighting in restaurants -- none of it good. I can do a fantastic impression of my mother, and can mimic exactly what she would have had to say about this dim restaurant, no matter how good the food.
For what it's worth, she also had a vehement hatred of shredded lettuce, and whenever I happen to purchase shredded lettuce for, say, taco night, or if it comes on a burger, I take a picture and send it to my brother and we remember the good times.
A statue of Edgar Allen Poe.
A very good ice cream shop on Newbury Avenue, where I enjoyed a mighty fine peanut butter cup sundae for dessert.
Sunday, April 30th, 2023
It rained on Sunday, but before our chosen events opened up at the conference, we decided to take a quick walk through the Public Garden.
The Ether Monument, which commemorates the use of anesthesia in medical procedures.
Rest assured that ducklings were made way for.
The Boston Women's Memorial.
Seaweed salad, the opening salvo to a fine Thai lunch.
After lunch, I got to enjoy one of the crowning achievements of my life while ticking a major item off my bucket list.
I got to visit the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), currently housed at the Dorchester Brewing Company.
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Later that night after all was said and done, I got to try my very first piece of Boston Cream Pie.
Monday, May 1st, 2023
Our last day in Boston dawned dreary.
On our way back from the Dorchester Brewing Company the previous day, our Lyft passed by a lovely monument that I looked up, found was nearby, and wanted to go see. And so, before our last events at the conference, we went to see it.
This tulip sticking through a fence caught my eye, and then something else, a rural interloper, also caught my eye.
The Harriet Tubman Memorial.
Goodbye, Boston.
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"PI-b'di" for the fast-talking North Shore Italians. The North Shore is full of town names pronounced nothing like their spelling says they should. Billerica is "BRICK-ah", Haverhill is "HAY-vrul", Beverly is "BEV-eh-li", Woburn is "WOO-ben".
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