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End of Summer Blues
Author: TriSec
Date: 08/23/2025 12:33:35
Good morning.
Your mileage may vary, of course - but where I live, it's "Hell Week".
That's what the locals call it, anyway. Boston, as a college town, experiences an annual migration of upwards of 750,000 people moving about the city over the next week.
250,000 college students all move in at once, and especially the incoming freshmen will arrive with a minivan, moving van, and Mom and Dad, too. It's a chaotic scene in several neighborhoods. (Notably, Allston).
Boston's traffic is never good, but it moves to a new level starting after Labor Day. While more than a few freshmen don't bring their cars here, many thousands do. So they'll be fighting existing traffic, all the while learning to navigate Boston's notoriously tangled web of streets.
It's also peak tourist season. We'll be busy now until Thanksgiving. I suppose one "benefit" of climate change is that the foliage season starts a little later and lasts a little longer now. The traditional end of the foliage season used to be Columbus Day Weekend, but now it lasts until Veteran's day, and sometimes even later if the weather stays mild.
It can be trying times for the locals - but it's the region's lifeblood. Every part of the megalopolis has it's niche industries, and Boston's top few look like this. Healthcare. Finance. Education. Tourism.
Curiously, three of these industries are currently under siege from a certain orange buffoon a few hundred miles south of here. Although it proved to be an internet hoax, I was enamored of the idea that he's retaliating against Greater Boston colleges and Harvard in particular because his youngest offspring was rejected by that august institution, but I digress.
I won't enumerate them this time, but you know what the top colleges in our region are. Indeed, many of them are among the top colleges in the world. Which naturally means a very high percentage of students are not White, God-fearing, AMERICAN males.
You've no doubt heard about the ongoing kerfuffle between our Mayor Michelle Wu and the Trump maladministration, notable ICE, over our status as a "sanctuary city". Since that means that all sorts of depraved criminals are flooding the Greater Boston region, we must have an astronomical crime rate, and our citizens live in constant fear, right?
As the "Cradle of Liberty", Boston has always been the keeper of the flame for American liberties. Many of the things we take for granted come from this wee little city by the bay. (Massachusetts Bay, that is.) Again not enumerating them today, but if we can all take just a little inspiration from those great lights of the past, today's crises may seem small in comparison.
After all, if 16,000 colonists (not all of whom were Patriots) could defeat 4,000 of the Empire's Best Troops, anything at all is possible - but only if we all hang together. Otherwise, we shall all hang separately.
Your mileage may vary, of course - but where I live, it's "Hell Week".
That's what the locals call it, anyway. Boston, as a college town, experiences an annual migration of upwards of 750,000 people moving about the city over the next week.
250,000 college students all move in at once, and especially the incoming freshmen will arrive with a minivan, moving van, and Mom and Dad, too. It's a chaotic scene in several neighborhoods. (Notably, Allston).
Boston's traffic is never good, but it moves to a new level starting after Labor Day. While more than a few freshmen don't bring their cars here, many thousands do. So they'll be fighting existing traffic, all the while learning to navigate Boston's notoriously tangled web of streets.
It's also peak tourist season. We'll be busy now until Thanksgiving. I suppose one "benefit" of climate change is that the foliage season starts a little later and lasts a little longer now. The traditional end of the foliage season used to be Columbus Day Weekend, but now it lasts until Veteran's day, and sometimes even later if the weather stays mild.
It can be trying times for the locals - but it's the region's lifeblood. Every part of the megalopolis has it's niche industries, and Boston's top few look like this. Healthcare. Finance. Education. Tourism.
Curiously, three of these industries are currently under siege from a certain orange buffoon a few hundred miles south of here. Although it proved to be an internet hoax, I was enamored of the idea that he's retaliating against Greater Boston colleges and Harvard in particular because his youngest offspring was rejected by that august institution, but I digress.
I won't enumerate them this time, but you know what the top colleges in our region are. Indeed, many of them are among the top colleges in the world. Which naturally means a very high percentage of students are not White, God-fearing, AMERICAN males.
The universities in the Boston area with the highest foreign enrollment are Northeastern University (38% overall, 64% graduate), Boston University (29% overall, 36% graduate), and Berklee College of Music (39% overall), with significant international populations also at Harvard University (27% overall) and Babson College (34% overall). Northeastern University is noted as a leader in attracting international students in the U.S.
You've no doubt heard about the ongoing kerfuffle between our Mayor Michelle Wu and the Trump maladministration, notable ICE, over our status as a "sanctuary city". Since that means that all sorts of depraved criminals are flooding the Greater Boston region, we must have an astronomical crime rate, and our citizens live in constant fear, right?
Trump administration officials claim that state and local laws preventing police from participating in federal civil immigration enforcement (sometimes referred to as “sanctuary” policies) make communities more dangerous. But these claims don’t fit the facts.
The Center for American Progress conducted a nationwide analysis of over 2,000 counties in 2017, finding that crime per capita is significantly lower in sanctuary counties compared to similar non-sanctuary counties. On average, there were 35 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties. These results accord with many other peer-reviewed studies. What’s more, the Center for American Progress report found that sanctuary counties are also more economically prosperous. A 2020 study published by researchers at UC San Diego found that immigrants are less likely to trust local law enforcement if they work with ICE. These studies support the view, long espoused by the ACLU and other supporters of welcoming city policies, that creating a clear boundary between policing and immigration enforcement enhances rather than diminishes community safety.
In Boston, the city’s Trust Act was signed in August 2014 and amended in 2019. The law prohibits City of Boston officials from using city resources to assist with federal civil immigration enforcement. Recently, the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans have taken aim at Boston and Mayor Michelle Wu, demanding that the city assist with Trump’s plans for mass deportations. Underlying these demands are claims that policies such as Boston’s harm public safety.
But the facts tell a very different story: FBI and BPD data show crime rates, already declining when the Trust Act passed in 2014, have continued to decline in the nearly 11 years since the legislation became law. Indeed, Boston has reported historic lows in the number of homicides and shootings over the last few years. Both property crime and violent crime, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, have been on the decline since 2005, a decline that continued following the enactment of the Trust Act.
As the "Cradle of Liberty", Boston has always been the keeper of the flame for American liberties. Many of the things we take for granted come from this wee little city by the bay. (Massachusetts Bay, that is.) Again not enumerating them today, but if we can all take just a little inspiration from those great lights of the past, today's crises may seem small in comparison.
After all, if 16,000 colonists (not all of whom were Patriots) could defeat 4,000 of the Empire's Best Troops, anything at all is possible - but only if we all hang together. Otherwise, we shall all hang separately.
