Elisabeth Donnelly

I was in Boston, where my family lives, for a couple of days. I got to eat fried oysters and see the ocean at night as a lightning storm raged behind the clouds. I can’t even begin to parse out my feelings regarding Boston (or to be more specific, the greater Boston area) - needless to say, they’re complicated, and rather teenage and emotional in tenor. 

But what I have been noticing, more and more, is that Boston overall has made some great efforts to be a more flourishing city: there’s a bike share program, the Rose Kennedy Greenway is gorgeous, and areas where I worked in high school and college that were dodgy now have no artists in lofts and new museums and condos and renovations. It’s all for the good, I suppose. There’s an artisan cheese shop in Southie next to a fancy dog wash. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s blanding out, losing its character and its natives just to draw yuppies with money. There’s something in there that feels like a loss to me, although I suppose it’s a very familiar story.