Put Dot in your pipe

If you wanted to mix a fine tobacco and give it a name that conjures contemplation and reflection, what would you call it?

If you wanted to brand a lifestyle that commends thinking deep thoughts while getting one's hands dirty not only in the realm of ideas but in the real world of rusty sewer pipes, what word sums that all up?  I've got a ready-made label for you, Buster.  Where I live, we call practical philosophers 'Dot Rats.'  If Voltaire were alive, he would agree.

Thinking deep thoughts, dreaming big dreams, wrestling joy from the barbs lobbed by ill-tempered slingers and archers, hearing God Himself call out in the rumble of the last train of the day headed back to the yard an hour and a  half after midnight, finding joy in the details that pile up to make a passing day...Buddy, that's the Dorchester way.  It may be esoteric to some but to Dorchesterites, that's how they get along.  You don't have to be religious to catch Dot spirit.  You just have to have an open eye, an open heart, and an open mind while you trudge down the slushy, gritty, January sidewalk that borders Dorchester Avenue and Washington Street and Geneva Avenue and Morton Street and Morrissey Boulevard and Gallivan Boulevard and Norfolk Street and Talbot Avenue and Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue and River Road.

You'll get your questions answered in Dorchester, Bub.  We're talking about Dorchester, Mass.  It's a part of Boston.  It's Boston's guts.  It's the part of the city where Boston keeps its nuts.  Two-fisted poets call Dorchester home, the kind of of fellows who can argue you out of a debate and knock some sense into your thick skull at the same time.  They will drink you under the table while sharing their lunch bucket packed at home with an extra slice of humble pie in case they meet somebody like you.

Pipe smokers say it isn't the nicotine that makes their tobacco worth smoking, it's the flavor.  Dorchesterites say something similar about their neighborhood.  It isn't the kicks that make Dorchester memorable, it's the nuances and top notes that make living here something to savor.  You can have your cake and dottle in Dorchester.  You can put it in your pipe and smoke it.  Sitting on a bench in Dorchester, the world is a wonder to contemplate, all the pieces in place, all the world a stage, all the gears meshed in perfect alignment, no thread out of place, a matrix...a darned Dot Matrix.

Rough and tumble, hale and hearty, Dorchester perseveres.