Upholding the Spirit of Boston

We at Pioneer are thankful that our loved ones are safe.  That may not be great solace to our great city and to the celebration of the revolutionary spirit that we all hold dear — and that was dirtied on Marathon Monday.  This attack caused death and injury in a way that shocks us all.

For the foreseeable future, the attack will change Boston and our Patriot Day reenactments of defining battles and the ‘shot heard round the world,’ as Emerson later put it.  We will see more police, and more troops, patrolling the course and the final destination — we will see perhaps fewer runners.

A day after the horror, we begin to focus on understanding who, how and why.  The battles of Concord and Lexington were battles against a known enemy — a former friend and in fact still a friend to the many loyalists who continued to live and thrive in Massachusetts and the colonies.

In this case, we do not know the enemy.  Is the person or group foreign, therefore perhaps giving us reason to call up the spirit of the mechanic, John Parker, who captained the American forces at Lexington, famously declaring “if they mean to have a war, let it begin here”?  Or is the perpetrator domestic and tied to the darkest light in our political imagination?

At Pioneer, we will focus on the important work of upholding the principles that have inspired our great Commonwealth and defined our country.  Even as we are back at work today, we cannot ignore what happened yesterday.  This is a time to support our community, and as we seek understanding to avoid idle speculations that diminish the importance of what just happened.  As with all things, we seek to understand in a serious and measured way, based on facts.

Our hearts go out to those who have been killed, those injured, and their loved ones.  Our thanks go to our public safety personnel for their focus, sweat and imagination.