A la Kisala

I haven’t blogged as much as I had hoped to lately. Between processing the closing of Windsor Button – which happened on the 13th – and the deadline for taxes which fell on Marathon Monday (the non-profit I work for had 15 runners in the race), I had little brain space to write. I promised myself I would pick up my cyber pen again afterwards.

Then this past week happened.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll let your favorite search engine provide you with the details.  Boston. Marathon. 2013. That ought to get you plenty. But frankly if you don’t know what I’m talking about count yourself lucky and step away from the computer now. Ignorance can be bliss.

But I have two observations to make. The first – because this is a knitting blog – is that there is a level of anxiety, unease and fear that even I am not able to knit my way through successfully. Once news of the Marathon bombing reached me, my hands were only good for channel-surfing, web-browsing and speed-dialing, trying to ascertain whether my friends and associates were unharmed. (They were.) Twice during the ensuing week, once I could apply myself again, I worked most of a cable row with the cables crossing in the wrong direction. The first time it was several inches later before I noticed. The second time was during the lockdown and I noticed fairly soon, corrected it, and continued knitting – only to discover the next morning that I had to take out everything from the previous day because I had neglected to start decreasing when I should have. Still, I suppose there was some value to having my project to clutch in my hands even as it lay limp in my lap, or to have a channel for nervous fidgeting energy even though it did not let me salvage true productivity out of the wasted day. Nor did it do much to distract me from the unfolding news.

My other point, though, is that I am so proud of us! I am so proud of how prepared and responsive our public safety and medical personnel were, how effectively communication happened in emergent circumstances. I am proud of the cooperation and coordination of all the different agencies that brought the week to a resolution. I am proud of how our local and state officials conducted themselves throughout the ordeal. As tired as we all must have been of hearing and seeing the same coverage over and over during the intense days, I was even proud of the professionalism and restraint of the media. (I never thought I’d see a press conference that began with the announcement that there would be no questions actually end with …. no questions. But this happened repeatedly this week.) And finally, I was proud of my fellow urban residents – a million strong – who stayed indoors and off the street on a beautiful warm spring day because that was how we were asked to help. It was a privilege being locked down with you.