Continued...

Boston Harbor is a mix of working harbor and recreational resource. This tug is token of the former.


I made my way to the Charlestown Navy Yard, a working naval base and a National Park Service living history museum. We used to build ships here; there's history in what was done as recently as WWII, and history in why we no longer do, but the Navy will tell you a good deal about the former if you pay them a visit. And there has been a fair bit of condo development in the empty spaces, part of the broader transformation of Charlestown, that seems to have happened when I wasn't looking. My mental model for Charlestown was formed in the 70s, and involves a closed ethnic community with a covert criminal sub-culture and the marks of fetal alcohol syndrome on many faces. That was real enough then, and I caught some glimpses of it at the time, but, decades later, it's not clear how much of that old Charlestown survives (and where those people went, if they're not still there, or dead).














Just beyond the Navy perimeter, some Lyndon LaRouche people were making their unique rhetorical contribution to the national political discourse. Some things don't change so much, it seems.


Back in the "changed" column, I came to Paul Revere Park, a quiet gem of a civic space set off by the Zakim Bridge.


To be continued...