We call it Dorchester, by gum!

Again, today, I heard a slur that grates on my ears. I told someone I live in Dorchester. He replied, "You mean Poor-chester, don't you?" He said it with an elbow in my ribs and a wink. The jab to my chest was enough to almost spill my beer. My indignation came just shy of my shooting beer out my nose like a dowsed hen.

No. I didn't mean Poor-chester. I meant the much-maligned Dot. I meant the biggest and best part of Boston and I am not ashamed to say that I live in Dorchester. Snobs can look down their noses at Dorchester, but I don't. Neither do all the other good people who choose to make a home here. Those are the people who stride into a new day with puffed out chests and imperial bearing whether they have the status or situation to command the respect they justly deserve.

Dorchester is an empire of dirty fingernails, of street smarts, of mechanical ability, of earned experience honed to an edge that cuts through flimflam and cuts to the beating heart of all that is wrong in Boston. You can't make a city of students who will move away after graduation. You can't run a campus without janitors, secretaries, technicians, assistants to all the bright minds around which Boston's much vaunted glory and reputation revolves. The real smarts are in the struts not the strutting.

If you don't like Dorchester, don't visit. It's obvious enough that most people vote with their feet or their Charlie Cards and don't leave their calling cards in Dorchester. The neighborhood is none the worse for wear because of their ignorant decisions. Who needs people who don't have the eyes to see beauty under the blemishes? Dorchester isn't a catwalk at a fashion show, all surface and little substance. Dorchester is where raw meat is seasoned and cooked to provide a toothsome and satisfying meal.

My companion on Charles Street took a sip of his beverage. "Doesn't the trash bother you? Don't your feet stick to the sidewalk?" he asked. Yes on both counts, but the trash on Dot Ave or any Dorchester side street doesn't bother me as much as the flotsam and jetsam that I find on the sidewalks puking up their guts after a late night bender downtown. I have yet to see a Dorchesterite vomit into the bushes or urinate in plain sight. The people of Dorchester have a sense of propriety. What happens in Dorchester usually stays there and the wider world is none the wiser that great things happen here.