Lead Balloons

I'm riding an elevator in downtown Boston. There is a sign warning of travel restrictions during the last week of July. A woman gets on. We both stare ahead as per elevator etiquette. She reads the sign, raises an elegant hand and brushes the words gently. "Nothing's worth this...," she sighs. I laugh sympathetically; she gets off at the next floor.

Yet nothing's more worth this, I think into the empty elevator.

I'm in Boston for the time being, visiting my parents and watching the city ready itself for the Democratic National Convention. Tom Ridge is reportedly in town, overseeing security arrangements. Roadblocks are going up over a thirty-mile radius, some subway stations will be closed, and "chem-packs" have been distributed to emergency workers. Fresh-faced policemen in crisp uniforms are everywhere, good-daying people, affecting an alert but casual stroll. It feels like the Fourth of July and Y2K bundled into one great knot of excitement and pure dread--a mood suspended between civic pride and who's-idea-was-this-anyway, between stocking up on gas masks and fleeing to the Cape.

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