Some days I feel like this chap in the picture.  Other days, I feel like the whale.

I moved to New Orleans to live in a city that was the opposite of Boston.  Boy, I got what I wished for with that.  I feel like I went fishing and reeled in more than I can filet.  At least I have enough for a cook-out, a blubber boil, a stew pot, a trying out of the essence from the vast wealth of meat, there will be plenty left over for the sharks.  I find New Orleans overwhelming, not in a bad way.  I haven't had any bad days since I've moved here, just the impression that I have a lot to digest.

Sometimes I feel like the whale.  I am a wealth of experience and talents.  Isn't anyone.  I have made a satisfying life for myself wherever I have landed and planted.  There isn't any reason to think I can't make my mark here.  New Orleans is a city of opportunity, where chance marries fortune and they have beautiful babies full of promise.  ...and then they die, like we all do in the end.

New Orleans has been around a long time, for better and for worse.  Sometimes the city itself has been the whale and sometimes it has been the fisherman.  The name of this blog is Excelsior!  New Orleans!! for a reason.  From everything I see as I'm on patrol at all hours of the clock over all the calendar's pages, I see a city on the move, ever upward, one that doesn't cotton to shuteye.  I encounter a city where something is always happening and things are getting done, even if those things are not the most reputable.  New Orleans is not a technology-oriented metropolis.  It has little truck or traffic with notions of a new economy.  It is home to a creative class, heck, the whole city is nothing but a creative class.  Orleanians channel their energies not toward profit or dominating a niche market, unless that market is New Orleans itself.  Orleanians enjoy their surroundings, their lives, and their acquaintances.  This is a city in which no one is lonely and no one is bored.

I'm new here.  I may be wrong.  I may be the fisherman.  At least I can say I was here.  There's something to that.  Better a bad day spent on a New Orleans street than a good day of fishing.  You can put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Dorchester tea

On a rainy day like today, you may notice the puddles have a certain multi-colored sheen to them.  It's not because there's been an oil spill in Dorchester.  It's not the result of some industrial accident.  It's just Dorchester's natural hope and exuberance leeching out of the ground.

Even when the weather is drear, Dorchester is home to rainbows.  Where do you think they come from when the sun comes out?  Yep, they sprout out of the Dorchester ground.  God stores his rainbows in Dorchester.

You might think this link is a bit incongruous but it's not.  The last song on this album is called "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows."  Alice would fit right in Dot.  It's a lovely song.

Dot block rebellion

Like many things, it's not entirely clear to me what's going on at Four Corners this Saturday (March 13) at 5PM.  Though the Four Corners Action Coalition has organized something they call a rebellion, it seems to be a more usual protest, albeit one that includes a walking tour and a multimedia performance art piece.

And that is what makes Dorchester one of Boston's more surprising places.  Better known for criminal transgressions, Dorchester is a place of remarkable creativity.  The neighborhood has been remaking itself continually since it agreed to be annexed into the greater metropolis. No one will be taking a duck tour to Four Corners anytime soon and not just because it's not near the water.  That doesn't mean it's not a vibrant community in which people tangle the weft of their lives into the woof of the surrounding infrastructure.

21 Bullard Street is located on the slopes of picturesque Mount Bowdoin.  While the neighborhood may have seen more spendthrift days, the community is alive and well and rallying.  If you are interested, and you should be, the tour starts at this address at 5:00 and ends at the same place.  Food, music, video and insight will follow.

Thanks to Boston Indymedia for the tip off.

Walking, eating, shopping

I checked out the book Boston Neighborhoods by Lynda Morganroth yesterday from the Mission Hill library.  For whatever reason, it was filed on the Military History shelf, right next to Naval History.

This is a tourist guide advising where to find picturesque walks, ethnic restaurants and reasonably eclectic boutiques that you can't find in suburban shopping malls.  The BPL edition is copyrighted 2002 and it's surprising how quickly it has gone out of date.  Not the feel for each neighborhood, but how many businesses have gone out of business.  Like any of these guides, it is a time capsule preserving what happened to be around when the author was observing.

Ms. Morganroth is an amenable observer.  Her observations in the South Boston/Dorchester chapter are accurate in spirit and she seems to have actually walked around and enjoyed the details of the neighborhoods.  She is spot on enough about Dot that she's inspired me to take a trip to Somerville's Union Square to see what I can see this weekend.  I always like to take the bus, after all, even if I don't do it as much as would be good for my soul.

I can't speak as the government

It's a beautiful day for a neighborhood, especially if that neighborhood is named Dorchester, Mass.  Can it get better than that?  I suppose it depends on where you live, but if you live in Dorchester, the chips are stacked in your favor.  A Dorchester address is like winning the lottery.  Every rainbow has a pot of gold at its end and Glory Begorrah!  Dorchester has its share of shamrocks.

You have junk in Dorchester and you have food.  You don't find junk food.  You can purchase potato crisps and potato chips, you can stock up on two-ounce boxes of Jujyfruits, there is more greasy pizza and Chinese takeout for sale in Dorchester than there is in the North End and Chinatown.  Dorchester is bigger than both combined.  That's how things shake out here; that's how the cookie crumbles and the fortune unfolds.  Dorchester nourishes.  The very air on the streets themselves offers a harvest of food for the soul.

I saw a woman crying on Washington Street in front of the post office off Codman Square.  She had just received a letter from her long lost brother.  She showed me the letter and I couldn't read the Haitian Kreyol.  A passing pedestrian translated.  "Dear Sister," the letter read, "I have heard of Dorchester and it sounds like the best part of Boston.  It may be the best part of America.  You are very lucky to live there.  Is there room in this fabled Dorchester for a poor wretch like me, a man with no luck, a checkered past, an honest man who has run afoul of corrupt policemen?  Is there room for a person who wants to live by his wits and ability?  Do you think I will fit in in Dorchester, that cream of Boston neighborhoods?  My visa has been approved.  Should I look for an apartment in South Boston instead?"

The translator told me the letter was over.  "I can't speak for the government," I said.  "I can't speak for anyone in Dorchester or Boston but myself, but this brother sounds like the person who moves here and succeeds.  There is plenty of room in Dorchester for people who want to make their lives better. "  I paused.  "Tell him that though I can't speak for Dorchester or for Mayor Menino, I can speak as an American.  Tell him I welcome him and I will be proud to shake his hand, man to man, when he becomes a fellow citizen of this great nation."

"Tell your brother," I whispered conspiratorially to the crying woman, "that he has the best long lost sister in the whole world.  She is a found sister and she has found him a place to put down roots and grow."

Deceiving appearances

Ever wonder what's inside the fraternal lodges scattered around Dorchester?  Not just the American Legion and the VFW.  I mean the windowless buildings fronts that house the Shriners, the Society of Vulcans,  the Woodmen, the oddly acronymed H.O.G.S.I.C., or that mobile home parked on New England Avenue that has a bronze placard engraved "Society 11, A.E.I.O.U." posted next to the boarded up screen door.

I was out on the Dot last night and I was invited to one of these fraternal lodges this afternoon.  I am sworn not to say which.  I intended to make an expedition to the wilds of Newton to chase down a rumor of Dorchester immigration for business reasons, but an adventure close to home is always better than one that involves a journey.  

Know your surroundings like the back of your hand.  Know your surroundings like you know your soul.   If you don't know your neighborhood, you can't know yourself.  A city is a collection of people grounded in one moment in time in a particular place.

So I met up with some members of a fraternal order that also has a ladies' auxiliary branch.  Both male and female members were present when I arrived, to ensure I was worth granting a tour.  Though I knew the clubhouse address, I was blindfolded and led to our destination as a matter of protocol.  I didn't mind, though the passing cars honking as I was led down the sidewalk was a tad startling.

I can't reveal what transpired after this.  Let me only say that the peeling paint and darkened windows on the outside of these private clubs is not indicative of the furnishings inside nor their civic pride or involvement.  Any community that hosts such a panoply of private organizations only does so because public organizations don't serve the job they are intended.  Because people don't jump on City Hall's bandwagon doesn't mean they are disengaged.  Quite the reverse.

The picture that opens this report is a hint of what I found a block or three from the center of Codman Square.

I'l leave it up to you to guess what the actual address was.  It was a very interesting afternoon, but without many surprises beyond the decor.   You can't live long in Dorchester without noticing the positive impact ad hoc societies have on the body politic and the body civic.  No expects the top tier, governor- or mayor-appointed  boards of development, commerce, tourism, industry, investment, job creation, beautification, arts advancement, race relations, or home garden produce promotion to do much work at Dorchester's street level.  Those who wait are lost.  

Dorchester waits for no one.  It moves forward, inexorably like a glacier.

Seaweed peddlar

I was practicing my dart game and enjoying a pint of lager at JJ's Irish Pub and Grille when I should have been working at my day job.  It was a little after noon, so I knew I still had time to get my desk before my boss would show up.  Tossing darts at a target is an important skill for a gentleman to have, so even if I was a few hours late I knew my supervisor wouldn't begrudge me a little time spent practicing in front of the bull's eye rather than the computer screen.  He was probably doing the same thing in a Somerville barroom if he wasn't clicking heels with his mistress.

A man came in with a trash bag of seaweed.  Now this is December and a foot of snow had fallen the day before.  Who collects seaweed in this weather?  The wind at the beach must have frozen his fingers.  To put wind-whipped hands into piles of wet weed took a ligamentary fortitude I can't imagine.  The trash bag stunk like low tide.

The bartender, a lady in her late 40s called out, "What's that rot you've brought in here?  Don't you know people are eating and drinking?  You're going to put them off their plates and cups!  I'm trying to run a sanitary establishment here, not a dumping ground."

The man tipped his hat and placed his belongings in a corner.  "Beg pardon," he said, "I just want to get warm before I take my haul home to Pearl Street.  The wind is biting cold on my poor limbs."

"Biting cold, I bet," Chauncy snarled at the man.  Chauncy and I had been shooting darts and, while he had been amicable enough while we were competing, his face took on an unpleasant look.  Chauncy looked at the seaweed peddlar and said, "I'll bite ya, I will.  I'll bite ya with my wee dart.  Look out!"  and he motioned as if he were going to toss a missile right at the man's backside.

Things didn't get uglier than that.  The seaweed peddlar beat a hasty retreat, maybe headed to the Burger King down Dot Ave where the entrance requirements aren't so strict and the staff and clientele aren't so judgmental.  The man opened the door and hauled his trash bag through it.  The wind blew at the same instant and the bar room stunk like rotten fish and unpleasant things for a long time afterward.

The hippoDOTamus!

Do you remember when Clarabelle the Hippo escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in the early 70s?  I wasn't living in Boston then and, obviously, I was much younger, but I vaguely remember Walter Cronkite reporting it on the nightly news.  Some people remember it much better than I do.  They are keeping the memory alive.

I was reminded of this event while taking an after dinner stroll this evening through Pope John Paul II Park,  on the banks of the placid Neponset estuary.  At one of the turns in the river, a small group had gathered shining flashlights and laser pointers over the gently lapping waves.  "She's over there!" someone whispered loudly.

It was hard to tell with just flashlight beams, with all the reflected lights of the Quincy Inn and the bridge catching the gentle ripples in the river, but the crowd had gathered to gawk at what appeared to be a bobbing oil drum in mid river.  "Sure," someone else said, "That's her."

One of the onlookers brought me up to speed.  "She usually comes out on frigid nights when there's no moon," she told me.  "We're not sure why but we are sure this is why no one has seen her directly for thirty years.  It's a survival strategy: don't go out when people are around.   She has to come out sometime though so she comes out when it's hardest to see her."  Pope John Paul II Park is officially closed to after dinner strollers at sundown.

Someone coughed.  "Shhhh!" a girl scolded, "You'll scare Clarabelle!"  That's when I realized what we were supposed to be looking at.  It really did look like a floating, abandoned oil drum to me.

That was before a snort echoed over the river's breast and there was a splash where the flashlights were pointed.  After repeated tracking back and forth, the object afloat in the river couldn't be found.  The girl turned and chided the person who coughed,  "You did it, Mister!  You scared Clarabelle!  Now I'll never see her again!"  She started whimpering and her mother tried to comfort her.

A hippopotamus can live 40-50 years, so Clarabelle's survival is within the realm of the possible.  As an animal native to Africa, her chances in New England winters seem somewhat slim, but sometimes life is stranger than art.  Another example of Dorchester cryptozoology.  It's the people like I encountered tonight who keep these legends alive and make Dorchester history so interesting. 

Loving the Dot Life.

Birds do it. Bees do it. People in Eastie and in West Roxbury do it. People in Dorchester do it too: they fall in love.

A city is a school of hard knocks and Boston is no exception. There is a reason that MIT and Harvard are located across the Charles River in Cambridge. Painful lessons get taught and learned in a metropolis where the spoons are not cast in sterling silver but in zinc and lead, pig iron and trace molybdenum, a curry of slag and mercury tailings mixed into a slurry of ferrous sulfate, ferrous oxate and feral habits. Some intellectual meals are consumed with dainty silverware, while others are served up on the blades of snow shovels and forced down an unwilling student's throat with a boot heel and a blackjack that is more bitter than any supermarket or convenience store brand of licorice.

It takes a neighborhood to raise a child, and anyone who can recognize that fact can be the Secretary of State or, maybe, even President of all 50 United States. There is no rule that someone born and raised in Dorchester, Mass., the biggest and best part of Boston, cannot reach past the limits of her or his potential. Comets never stop. Dorchester hasn't stopped moving or evolving since Time began. There is no evidence to suggest that Dorchester itself doesn't set the standard toward which other places should aim. Some places lead. Eventually, other places will follow the sweet, sweet smell of success. For the moment, at least, Dorchester stands alone.

Dorchester is unique. Spend a few hours on Bowdoin Street or on Columbia Road or on the mid-southerly stretches of Columbia Road. You learn quickly enough that you're not in Roxbury anymore. You learn quickly enough that while you are in Boston, you are in a different kind of Boston. You are in Dorchester. You're in the Dot, and the Dot is not a pot of jam, a pot of mustard, or a cannabis market. It is a place in which generations follow one anther trying to do well for everyone involved, personally, familiarly and communally. Each party pulling ever upward at the sails with all hands on deck.

Children are raised in Dorchester to become responsible adults, productive citizens, vertebrae in Boston's semi-rigid, semi-flexible, ramrod backbone. Adults spend their whole lives in Dorchester, mixing their good will and collected energy, minute-by-passing minute, into the concrete that will cement a better tomorrow. Love makes a community and love blossoms in Dorchester. Sometines that love is passionate. Most often that love is resigned and contented that good work is being done.

Birds do it and bees do it. Dorchesterites do it too. There is plenty of room and time in Dorchester for love. Office workers downtown watch the clock ready to punch out and get on with thier real lives, their Dot lives. They leave Boston proper and head home on the bus or the Fairmont Line or the Red Line. You can love your job in Boston but if you live in Dorchester, that's where you really love your life.

Some different ways to think about the facts of Dorchester.....

...secrets, situations, comedies, decadence....Dorchester...100% on the Dot.

Boston's in-crowd

Boston's stars revolve around Dorchester. Boston's center of gravity resides, imperturbably, in Dorchester. Both light and opinions bend according to Dorchester's pull.

Dorchester contains more Bostonians than any other of the city's neighborhoods. It is a good place's nature to suck the cream off the available milk. When outsiders think of Boston's more desirable residential neighborhoods, they think of the Back Bay and Beacon Hill. They think of the North End or the South End. That's why they are outsiders. Insiders know the real deal and from where the butter comes that coats the side of the bread that falls face down.

Just as the most desirable things are rarely marketed to the masses, the value of Dorchester real estate and culture isn't promoted to the hoi polloi. Dorchester has the upscale cachet of an exquisite wrist watch with a brand name you've never heard of, or an automobile more rare than a DeLorean. It may look odd and out of place, but that's the idea, the cachet, the je n'est sais quoi. When you put your finger on what makes Dorchester so good, you'll feel a rarified pulse. It is like palpating the carotid artery of an opera singer who has overdosed on ether just before she regains conciousness to sing another aria from the top of her ample lungs and bring down the house.

There are more millionaires in Dorcheseter than there are in any other part of New England, including Fairfield County, Conn. Through sleight of tax return and property maintenance, this statistic is a secret. Only the Illumadotti know the truth.

If Tom Menino gets re-elected to be the longest serving mayor in Boston's history, it will be because the collective will of Dorchesterites makes it so. If it is Michael Flaherty's fate to break Mayor Menino's winning streak, it is because the population of Dorchester has rallied behind his unofficial deputy, Sam Yoon, a transplanted Dorchesterite who the locals respect.

Ignore Boston's biggest and best neighborhood at your peril. Those in the know, know Dorchester pulls Boston's strings.