Justin Peters, at Slate, on Boston overnight:
Everybody is talking to fill the silence. But the silence speaks for itself. The streets are cordoned with police tape, but Boston is a big city, and the cops can’t guard every blocked-off street and alley. I walk away from the bums and reporters, slip under some police tape, and head up dark Blagden Street, directly behind the Boston Public Library. On my left, the huge, half-circular windows of the library’s modernist Johnson Building reveal an empty, brightly lit reading room. On my right, three women smoke cigarettes outside an apartment building, looking like they’ve run out of tears. Straight ahead is Exeter Steet, right where it happened. The road is blocked with police cars. I can’t see much at all, except for, in the near distance, emergency personnel in white haz-mat suits, digging and sifting and trying to figure out what just happened here.
I was working on a post on coffee making yesterday, which immediately became far too banal to even think about publishing. This is the first Event for which I had a twitter feed on, and while I see its utility in times of crisis, I also now see what they mean:
I’m voting for unbearable and signing off • RT @woodtang: Twitter is both essential and unbearable at times like this
— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) April 15, 2013