Crossing The Bridge

We crossed the Great Morass of Equivocation via the Longfellow Bridge and arrived at Olson with a few minutes to spare before the start of the annual Festival of Opinion. This particular festival's theme being Form One. We passed along Eliot Street through neighborhoods where housing had replaced casinos, trendy boutiques and coffee bars, and the corporate headquarters of Donut, Donut, Donut. ( The board of directors realized their days in a gluten free society were numbered so they opted to relocate.)

Olson began as an experiment in community following the Great Debacle. People gravitated to the concept Live is a Verb. Expression ran rampant. Quaint cottages and rows of brownstones line streets. An entire block of frame buildings that had once housed factory laborers was demolished to make room for a hotel but a public outcry halted the hotel's development and the building, now complete, houses a library.

We spent an afternoon exploring the grounds at the homestead of the social critic, Will Perry. His famous words are inscribed on a plaque bolted to the stone wall surrounding the tulip garden: It's easy to be critical of a culture in which more people know of the Kardashians than know of James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. (Excerpted from Travels With My Aunt.)