I’m in Boston for spring break, and today is Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m staying in Allston, which is between my two main destinations: Boston College and Downtown. (This is also the area in which my parents grew up, met, and wed–Brighton, really.) The hotel is a thirty-minute walk to Allston Station, so I’m still getting some exercise. Now that I live in New Mexico, Boston feels like a small space–divisible into blocks instead of canyons and mesas.

Today I went to the Burns Library at BC to delve into the Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien) collection. It was a joy to read and photograph the typescripts of his unfinished novel, Slattery’s Sago Saga. Once I have gathered my research materials, I shall devote time to analyzing his creative process.

After spending a few hours at the library, I headed back to the hotel to gear up for the Bruins game. I then hopped on the Green Line to Government Center. There wasn’t much time for rest or a decent meal. I was straight to TD Garden. The Bruins have had a horrible year, and they recently lost Brad Marchand to the Florida Panthers. TO THE FLORIDA PANTHERS! The Bruins lost in overtime, of course, but it was nice to see them play in Boston again–even if my seat was at a distance. (Tickets were much cheaper in Florida.)

I’ll be talking about street art in my comparative literature course when I get back to Gallup. The course invites a “world as text” and multimedia approach. So I’ve been taking photos of street art during my walks. Aside from myriad murals on display, there is the more typical illegal art clinging alongside bridges, underpasses, and walls. I noted several that referred to I.C.E. (U.S. Immigrants and Customs Enforcement). Boston is a city of immigrants, then and now. Shame on those of Irish ancestry who show little empathy for new immigrants. Has Boston changed since I grew up in the area and since my parents and grandparents grew up here? Yes. I’ve heard countless languages on the Green Line, and, as far as I’m concerned, those are my people–Indian, Venezuelan , Haitian, Palestinian, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, and Malaysian. While it’s true that I hear the echoes of an Irish American past as I walk along the Charles River or tour the campus of Boston College, that’s just one layer to an America in the making. Is an immigration policy needed? Of course, but it should be decent, humane, and consistent. It’s an absurdity that the current administration professes to make “America first” without realizing how much of its innovation derives from immigrant labor.

The American anthem was sung before the hockey game. I tried to recall what it meant in the past as I stood and held my cap to my chest–something about an ideal, about kindness and fairness, about welcoming the tired, poor, huddled masses. Today I think of all those who repeat the Irish experience–abandoned, hungry, and lost. To my mind, that is what Saint Patrick’s Day represents.

(Apologies for not using a typewriter for the next few posts. My Hermes Rocket chose to stay home.)