Photos Etc.

City of sin …

My new school is about three miles from the ocean, but since it’s the Boston area, the drive takes 20 minutes, 30 with traffic. Yesterday, I was stuck at school for a meeting that would happen later in the evening. Since I couldn’t go anywhere til then, I headed over to the beach to kill some time. The route put me in a town called Lynn. Despite being beachfront real estate, Lynn has a rough reputation. (Locals, feel free to drop your favorite Lynn rhyme and mine in the comments below.) Anyway, I walked around a bit at a park called Red Rock, which wasn’t too bad. It was hot and breezy. The only sense I got that I was in “the real New England“ was that the women sitting here and there in lawn chairs seemed a little grouchy, brandishing lit cigarettes and beer cozies. They were my age or older, swearing at each other, accents on glorious display. I didn’t have a camera other than my phone, so I just wandered around, overdressed, and watched some planes come in toward Logan. Toward the end, I met a nice Turkish man who was fishing from the rocks. We chatted despite a bit of a language barrier, and I found out he had been here three years. He asked where I was from, and figuring he hadn’t heard of Oregon, I said California, which I guess is just as true. I wished him welcome and good luck, and headed back to my meeting.