coffee community

September 15, 2001

Today's Starting Pitcher:
There is no baseball today anywhere in the USA.

Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Please spay/neuter your pets!

Photos:

Emerald

Heather_2

Emerald is a real lap cat who loves to play. Heather_2 is an indoor cat who likes to eat vanilla ice cream. While I was photographing them today, the adoption center was more crowded with people than is usual on Saturday afternoon - people who told me they are looking for comfort in this time of tragedy. Comfort and life. The ton of lively kittens in the office are very popular today.

Blue jays are all over the place here at my condo complex and at the cat shelter and the refuge. They're flocking. It's a major blue jay event. More signs of life. And there goes an airplane headed for the Lawrence Airport - that's the one they fly the dinky planes with the advertising banners out of. More signs of normality's returning.

Logan Airport partially reopened today. That's a sign of almost normality. Not that Logan will be fully operational anytime soon. I suspect it will never have the volume of flights it used to have. For awhile this week I was having a strange nightmare involving Massport being sued into bankruptcy and Logan never reopening leaving Boston with no connection to the outside world except by car or boat - don't know why trains didn't exist in this dream, my subconscious must be really whacked. Without Logan Airport, Massachusetts itself would be impossible (to mangle a cliché from somewhere or other).

I figured if I hung out at Starbucks this morning I might run into some of the old coffee buddies. Sure enough as I was there sipping my latte M&M and Marco appeared. We got a table and talked and talked. Dan and Geri showed up and said they had to go but then they stayed and talked and talked and talked. We'd already run out of chairs when Hussein showed up on his coffee break from the tailor shop so he stood and talked with us. I've never been so glad to see him in my life. He's a very reassuring guy (and a Muslim who frequently tells us that what these fanatics believe is not Islam). Then Tom joined us. I half expected Ned and some of the Larry's and Dicks but no more folks arrived. We talked and talked and talked and talked.

M opined that the only way to counteract the chaos that the world has become is to build community and one of the places to build community is in the coffee shop. Y'know, so many revolutions have been fomented in coffee shops we might just be able to start a peace revolution right here where Ford's Coffee Shop (and then the Coffee Connection) used to be. Chaos or community? It's up to us. Every one of us.