Rats' alley

Valley girls are, you know, like, everywhere in Boston? In fact I found one crouched in the drapes outside my fairly grand hotel room at 3:40 am, cell phone grafted to one ear while her words struggled within a thicket of self-exploration. Is there a quota of 'you knows' and 'like's to complete within each 24 hours? And should I, like, have been more understanding of the 3:00 am wake-up call? Why is every Valley girl (and boy) utterance a, you know, question even when it isn't, like, a question? The effort of trying to express anything seems immense, but onwards the tide of words flows. Valley girls are, like, not quitters.


I'm staying at the Parker House Hotel, where JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier in the hotel dining room, Malcolm X was once a busboy, and Ho Chi Minh a pastry chef. John Wilkes Booth was a resident only weeks before the Assassination, and practised for his spot in history by repairing to a shooting gallery (you know what kind I mean) just around the corner.




The Parker House is at the edge of Beacon Hill, right on the Freedom Trail and very close to Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House.




Not only is this district celebrated for its part in the founding myth of American independence, it is also celebrated for the role of its abolitionists in the Underground Railway. When I came across this slaves alley (below) my first thought sprang out of Eliot's words :

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

I walked along the whole way (the alley seems to disappear, but in fact rounds a corner and emerges into another little street) thinking of bounty-hunters, slave-catchers, child-sex tourists, arms-traders, and all the other really unpleasant forms of humanity that have the survival skills of the cockroach. But the struggle for Independence seems minor compared with the ongoing difficulties faced by so many of America's black citizens. The only people who have begged money off me during my days in the U.S. have been black people, and it's not hard to see why. For many of them, ill-educated in rundown local schools, without health cover or adequate welfare, and confronted by unspoken racism, the struggle for them is a long way from over. On the flight from Seoul two of the four 'Classic' films available to watch were 'Gone with the wind' and 'Guess who's coming to dinner?' As every other available movie seemed to involved a bunch of violent men trying to blow each other apart, I watched both. The issues each film tried to deal with (in a whitey kind of way) have been resonating with me ever since I got here.


Like most of the rest of America I went to church this morning, into an undistinguished looking building nearby which resembles the exterior of St George's in Paris in its lack of front. Inside was a different story. Because of the music it was anything but undistinguished. The entire liturgy was sung to a jazz setting, with fabulous drumming, a pianist, a guitarist, a trumpeter, and several backing singers, and frankly the music was out of this world. At one point they picked up a 5/8 rhythm, at others the influence was plainly gospel, and at another the drumming was of the kind Gene Krupa could produce on a good day. Of course most music has come out of religious worship of different kinds; it was fascinating to see how well such a vibrant and modern sound could integrate into the still ancient words of the liturgy. I was really blown away.

Halloween soon!

Another naughty squirrel darl - this one shared my park bench with me.