Staying Out Of The Rain

Boston

I decided to get the bus up here yesterday lunchtime, but with the Thanksgiving weekend coming to a close several hundred others had the same idea. Bus after bus left New York one after the other, only to get snarled up in a lengthy traffic jam made worse by some torrential rain. It was a slow journey and it had long since got dark by the time I got to the hostel a couple of hours late.

Today I went to the Kennedy presidential library and museum on the campus of the University of Massachusetts. It's a very strange looking building although it does give fine views across the water to the city itself. As for the museum it thankfully glossed over the assassination and instead had countless exhibits showing speeches of Kennedy's, many of which were very interesting. It was particularly good to see the lengthy extracts from his 1960 debates with Nixon and all told I spent more than three hours in the place.

Boston is home to another JFK and I'm writing this in the very grand library at Copley Square where John Kerry was to have given his victory speech on election night. Already he seems to have disappeared from view even around here. Apart from a few tattered looking campaign stickers on students' bags, Boston is visibly still more preoccupied with celebrating the Red Sox World Series triumph. But when you haven't won something since 1919, I suppose that's forgivable.