Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Dad writes:
Well, I very much hope this blog is less infuriating than it was last night, when it wouldn't let me post an entry without a photograph, and then wouldn't let me upload a photograph.The only good thing was that contrary to my momentary despairing thought, it hadn't actually deleted the whole entry too.
Anyway, today we've gone up in the world - we're in the posh but slightly gloomy Lenox Hotel in central Boston (No.1 in Boston on Trip Advisor, which does make you wonder a bit what No.73 must be like.)
Haven't got much of an impression of Boston yet, but took in two enjoyable sights today:first, and shown in the picture, I.M. Pei's massively impressive J.F. Kennedy Library and Museum, on the bay in the University of Massachusetts campus, and then the very mad (and interconnected) Peabody and Natural History museums in the Harvard area.
The latter can be described pretty precisely as the Pitt Rivers meets the Rothschild stuffed animal museum at Tring. Chloe liked this, and bought crystals.
The Kennedy museum is terrific - a bit of a whitewash, sure, with no trace of Marilyn Monroe and "happy birthday Mr President" but still a powerful enough tale that it's not really possible to remain dry-eyed in the last couple of rooms. And of course, you simply can't help wondering how different everything would have been if he had lived.After his death, it took only 11 years for America to plumb the depths of cynicism and self-doubt with the coinciding of Watergate and the last act in Vietnam, and I think you could argue that it has never really recovered. Could it have been that bad if he'd had a second term (and then handed over to Bobby)??
Anyway, having visited big memorials to FDR and JFK in the last few days, I can't help feeling that I've seen the best of America, and Americans.If you can turn off your cynicism and ennui for a few minutes, you simply cannot help responding to the sheer decency of these people.
- comments