I'd really like to have had a more positive post to make here

[ckd]

I'm home, as safe as can be expected and physically OK. My office is closed, my city has advised everyone to stay indoors and shelter in place, an MIT police officer was shot and killed a few blocks away less than an hour after I walked through that area last night on my way home....

I think "physically OK" will have to do for now.

Comments

[ckd]

Just to give you an idea: the spot on the MIT campus where PO Sean Collier was shot? Google Maps calls that a 10 minute walk from my house, but I walk faster than that. Half a mile, and that's because you can't go straight there.

The focus seems to have shifted to Watertown, which is the next town[*] west and I'm nearer the east end of Cambridge, so I'm not really close to it now...but hardly far away.

[*] Watertown is legally a city, as it has a council as its governing body rather than a town meeting (which is the distinction between towns and cities in Massachusetts law). However, it is called a town and is therefore named in statutes as "the city known as the Town of Watertown". I consider this an endearing quirk of Massachusetts.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

We actually have a few of those here in SoCal, small polities who stubbornly hold onto their city status though the megalopolis has amoebaed all around it on all sides.

[ckd]

The best example of that around here is Brookline, which is actually a town but is almost completely surrounded by Boston (a part of the border abuts Newton instead). It's an exclave of Norfolk County, as Boston is in Suffolk and Newton is part of Middlesex.

Random historical/governmental/geographical/utilitarian trivia follows, mostly because it's interesting enough to me to keep me distracted from other stuff right now:

- A significant number of municipalities refused to be annexed by Boston; this actually stopped the expansion of Boston to the north side of the Charles (with the exception of Charlestown) as neither Cambridge nor Somerville would join.

- Much of Cambridge is closer to downtown Boston than large chunks of Boston itself are.

- All of Massachusetts is part of some town or city; there are no unincorporated parts of counties as there are in many (most?) states.

- Counties exist, but several of them have had their governments completely disestablished with the state (strictly speaking, the Commonwealth) taking over the remaining functions like land registries, sheriff's offices and jails, etc.

- Middlesex County (one of those without a county government) has two county seats, Cambridge and Lowell.

- Most of eastern Massachusetts gets their water from the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority). Cambridge is the exception, having its own water system, reservoir, etc. This came in handy when an MWRA supply pipe burst and everyone on MWRA water was under a boil-water order....

("Love that dirty water, Boston you're my home.")

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Thank you--I love this kind of trivia as much as I adore cruising GoogleEarth . . .

[ron_newman]

During that water-supply episode, I resorted to biking over to the Harvard Science Center with 10 or 15 plastic bottles, and filling each one from the drinking fountain there.