bear

This has been the strangest week ever.

4/15: Holy crap, apparently bombs went off at the Marathon finish line? "Mass casualty event"?! (Right now getting most of my info from UHub. Nothing on boston.com yet.)

Have heard from friends who'd gone down to watch that they're okay. Parker was there; is okay, but is in lockdown with the rest of the sports press right now.

4/16: I first heard about it because friends who were there posted to Facebook, and then I looked over at Twitter and my feeds went from "Yay Ethiopians!" and "I just had the grossest lunch ever" and "So, who else is falling asleep at their desk?" to "Holy crap, explosions!" and "I'm okay!" and "Bostonians, please check in!" in the space of about 10 minutes. I was incredibly grateful yesterday for people adopting these "always connected" technologies and using them to share that they were okay - only a decade ago, when things like this happened, we had to write up check-in tools ourselves; today, they're well-established.

You can't possibly secure a marathon course the same way you secure a sporting event at a stadium. The whole point is that it's a community event, especially in Boston - you can decide to wander down to the finish line at any point, walk away to get lunch after seeing the winners, come back to cheer on the charity racers, watch from your office building and get so caught up in the excitement that you decide to skip out of work for half an hour to join the festivities. And the crowd size and density. Especially at the finish line, sidewalks packed full of specators between buildings and fences, very little room to move quickly and freely. Really easy to drive up the casualty numbers - two small bombs in that densely populated of a space sent almost 200 (per the Times) people to the hospital.

4/18: The "blame all brown Americans" bullshit continues. Just like the aftermath of 9/11. Learning from history, not us.

4/19, 7:39 am: Staying home. Staying safe. Baking cookies. Maybe getting some sleep at some point, because obviously didn't get much last night. Glad Watertown peeps are checking in confirming they're keeping their asses at home, too.

I think the "shit is REAL"-est part to me is hearing that Harvard has closed, because they NEVER close. They've even shut down the taxis and Hubway, in addition to THE ENTIRE MBTFREAKINGA, Amtrak, the airport and a no-fly zone, it wouldn't surprise me if they blocked off private cars driving down there.

9:25 pm: I am so grateful for all of our protectors, but I'm especially in admiration right now of the negotiator who convinced the guy to give himself up consciously. That takes mad skills.

4/21: hyounpark is pretty unambiguously Korean-looking, and there were definitely points throughout this week when crazies were about a step away from linking East Asian appearance with "tairism," thanks a lot Kim Jong Un and the American media for overhype and buying into it. :P And I'm ambiguous-looking enough for us both to be worried about me as well. And an Indian-American friend of mine was at Sonsie on Newbury last night and got yelled at by a worker there to "go back to his country." HE WAS BORN IN CLEVELAND, YOU DIPSHIT. Besides which, coverage of the victims has focused on the Boston-born, while people stumble to pronounce Lu Lingzi. (Lu Lingzi: 38,700 results. Krystle Campbell, 68,900 results. Martin Richard, 115,000 results.)

But yeah, we did not feel the desire to go out Friday night to join in the celebrations, partly because old and lazy, partly because depending on whether or not we had white-appearing "chaperones" possibility of racist stupidity, especially given all the alcohol involved in any likely place of celebration.

I really, really need to get my DAR card, because rubbing it in the faces of all these racist assholes and the system that supports them? Sheer beauty, even if futile-feeling.

I have much to say about the Delicious acquisition, but I'll save that for later when I can finish the background research I want to. I've also got a huge backlog of food pictures to post, especially from Cupcake Camp, and Chocolate Madness, and I have a new favorite cookie (the chocolate macaroons from Lakota Bakery in Arlington). And I did mean to be better at blogging, especially during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth. But first things first.

Chocolate Madness is a fundraiser where several dozen local restaurants and bakeries make exquisitely divine little chocolate creations for donors to nosh. I came prepared, of course - dressed similarly to other attendees in a nice skirt and top, wielding a mostly-empty stomach and my camera. (I may have a long-established habit of taking pictures of food.)

So I've got my camera out, and I'm fiddling with the aperture trying to focus on a nearby chocolate bourbon caramel ganache confection, when a middle-aged white person, with a name badge approaches me.

Middle-aged white person: "Excuse me, do you speak English?"
Me: "... I'm sorry, what did you say?"
MAWP: *gets look of "oh, shit, I just totally fucked up" on their face* *starts profusely apologizing*

Me, in the moment: Utter silence, because I've just glanced at that person's name badge and realized that as a local foodie, I most certainly recognize their name. I've been to their restaurant and enjoyed myself multiple times over the last decade. I know exactly how involved they are in social justice causes. (Very.) And they've just introduced themselves to me by asking me if I spoke the official language of our country* the same language everybody else surrounding them is speaking?

Me, five minutes later: "Dammit, I'm a California girl, I should've responded with, 'Like, omigod, totally!'"

Me, three hours later: "OMIGOD I HAD THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO USE 'CHING CHONG LING LONG TING TONG' AND I FAILED TO EXECUTE."

How do you even respond to that? Especially when you're anti-confrontational me? How am I still being blindsided by questions like these at a fundraiser for a liberal cause in a liberal city in 2011? How have I not developed the guts to call people on things like that when they happen? I recognize that they realized just how badly they screwed up and apologized immediately. But I'm still more than a little bewildered that it happened in the first place. I probably shouldn't be, given how Obama recently released his long-form birth certificate and that my first reaction was "Ugh, really, you gave into this absurdity?" I've since considered the words of people more versed in political strategy than myself, but even if it's meant to give Trump enough legitimacy to cause problems in the Republican party for the 2012 elections, it still feels wrong.

* I've been informed we don't actually have a legal 'official language' in the US! So I guess under the circumstances, English usage is more ... the lingua franca? De facto?

what's made me angry today:

1. the events of tuesday
2. the people jumping to blame someone, anyone without directing the blame where it belongs: the terrorists.
3. the racist backlash against AMERICANS who happen to have the wrong color skin and hair; who aren't even the same ETHNICITY; and even if they were that DOESN'T MAKE THEM GUILTY. hate calls, letters, windows being smashed at arab-american organizations. mosques being set afire and bombed. people trying to RUN arab-americans over. sikhs being jumped in the street because people are too ignorant and volatile to distinguish them from the terrorists. people afraid to go outside because they're wearing the wrong clothing, have the wrong skin color.

CNN mentions the texas mosque bombings, the sikh who got jumped in Oklahoma, the "Americans" with CONFEDERATE flags in illinois who were marching towards a mosque, the blood being poured (LITERALLY) on the floors of an arab-american community center in san francisco, san francisco, SAN FRANCISCO, my HOME.

and what little police protection has been established ... what happens when they go away? Not that I think police protection is the answer, either; the only REAL answer is education ...

(two fire engines just raced by, american flags streaming out the back, in the direction of the mosque two blocks away. i hope to god this is not where they're going, that they're responding to a stupid harvard school of public health student who burnt their popcorn ... please)

what an ugly combination fear, ignorance and stubbornness are.

bedtime.