Ted Kennedy died, and Massachusetts needs a new senator. The special election takes place January 19, 2010. There are four candidates. In addition, the Boston mayoral election is on November 3.

I moved to Boston in June 2003, and this the longest I’ve stayed put since I went to college. I consider myself relatively well-informed, politically, but these races have hardly registered in my conscious. I don’t know whom I’m supporting, nor who stands for what. The current New Jersey gubernatorial and New York City mayoral races still seem more relevant, somehow. I care more that Christie might actually be the governor of New Jersey (a potential travesty) and find discussing the pros and cons of Bloomberg’s potential term-limit extension much more interesting than whether the Menino machine can be broken.

Maybe this is the problem: In Boston and Massachusetts, in adherence to all stereotypes, the “machine” still seems to means something. If you want to be a player, have a future, in Democratic politics, you support the incumbent mayor for a fifth term, even if you can understand one of every five words he mumbles.

Likewise, now that Martha Coakley seems to have been appointed “the” Democratic candidate, it is unlikely that her three challengers will have a chance. Which is too bad, despite the fact that I’m sure she’d be a good senator (and I’m always supportive of women who run for office). 

Case in point: Last night Tim and I attended a fund raiser for Alan Khazei, another senatorial candidate. Khazei founded the nonprofit City Year (a kind of Peace Corps for teenagers that focuses on inner cities in the U.S.). He’s running a decidedly grass-roots campaign and is embracing the “community organizer” label. (“We have a community organizer in the White House!” he exclaims during his speeches.) I attended not so much because I support Khazei (indeed, I didn’t know much about him before yesterday and even thought his name was spelled like it is pronounced – “Casey” – and he was yet another Irish guy running for office) but because I knew some of the people hosting the fundraiser and was curious about why they were supporting this relative underdog.  The crowd was decidedly young and idealistic, and I spied a few figures whom I knew coveted a future in politics publicly bucking the machine and throwing their support behind Khazei, not Coakley. That in itself was heartening. But I don’t think he has a chance – not because of his message or demeanor (he is a funny, likeable man), but because the fundraising momentum is already behind someone else.

Khazei didn’t necessarily win me over last night. But meeting an actual candidate kindled my overall interest in the race.  In fact, it was invigorating.  I have always thrived when feeling like I’m in the know and aware of the world (one of the reasons why I became a journalist). Though going to the fundraiser meant missing putting Little Bug to bed (and how I miss her when I don’t see her all day!), a night away from my child might be worth it to keep the currents of inspiration and commitment to and interest in the world around me buzzing. In other words, to keep me being me.

Duh, you say. Of course you have to have a life of your own, apart from your kids (isn’t this what all mommy-lit is about?)  In reality, though, we all know how strong the pull of home is after a long day, children or not.  After the event, Tim and I swung by Gaslight (our favorite go-to-French bistro, in large part because of the free parking and quick access to the Expressway) for a quick steak frite. An impromptu weeknight dinner with one’s husband in an actual restaurant – no TVs, no computers, no dirty dishes – discussing politics and our work days (I have a vague fantasy that people without kids or with grown kids do this regularly…) is indeed a rare treat. And further compounded the obvious:  it’s good – essential, important, necessary, fulfilling, sustaining… – to get out of the urban-suburban commuting bubble (home, work, home). There’s a senate race going on and it matters to my life. So do personal relationships. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have stoked both fires.

Have you heard of Radio Ink magazine?

What, you haven’t? I’m shocked. Well, let me introduce you, here (scroll to p. 26).

Well, no, but I am a little obsessed with them at the moment, and with this view from my office window, I spend my days watching the huge container ships come in and out of the harbor. Today brought a particularly large one (I hope you get a sense of the scale — notice the Harbor Hotel in the very foreground — despite the non-iPhone photo), and I just imagined it coming into port from way out in the ocean, dodging pirates on its way.

What I will miss when we move to the suburbs: walking to work across the Public Garden and running into not one but two good friends.

And I will miss bringing Buggy to play on the ducks (dressed here in their Easter finest).

Real ducks (below).

It’s Good Friday, and I am at work. I realized this morning that I have never worked on Good Friday before. The good lord knows that I am hardly an observant Catholic anymore; however, I feel strangely guilty for being here (even though it’s not like I would be in church or something otherwise).

Good Friday used to mean those three hours Masses where you weren’t allowed to sit down. Catholicism is still a central tenant of my identity, more cultural than religious, but to this day if I go to a church service that is not Catholic, it doesn’t quite feel like church (even an Episcopal service — the Lord’s Prayer is just ever so slightly different at the end…)

We’re not going to church this weekend.* And I hadn’t really thought about making an Easter basket for Little Buggy (to my mother’s horror — but don’t worry: we have been invited to some Easter egg hunts with friends and their children, so at least she can observe that pagan ritual). I do sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing by not introducing religion to my child. Tim would argue that we are absolutely doing the right thing, but I think his more traditional (think: lots of kids, Catholic school) religious upbringing has scarred him more than it has me. Still, a nice, liberal, welcoming church with lots of music and stories of love and goodness (such as the church in which we baptized Buggy — see my prior post on that lovely day, here) would be something I could get into — if it didn’t conflict with naptime.

I’m surprised that today is not a holiday at the Firm — it’s a market holiday, and we are in one of the most Catholic cities in the country. The halls seem somewhat quiet today, and I haven’t received many emails, so even though this is no longer a religious holiday for me, I think I shall mark it in my own way by sneaking out a bit early, taking a long run on the river in the spring sunshine, and taking my baby to the playground.

*In addition to this being Easter weekend, it is also Master’s Weekend, a holiday in its own right that borders on the religious in our house. You think I’m kidding.

As much as I have come to love Boston and all its Massholes, New York City is — whether it’s because I read the Times daily (sorry, Tim, I just can’t read the Globe!), or because my family is nearby (out beyond the red lego, above), or because the years I spent living in Manhattan just after college are indelible in their penury and excitement — the city I still know and, perhaps, love the best.

I miss little things, little things so brilliantly captured in this Times  piece today.

It’s 5 p.m. on a bitterly cold, dark Saturday, and I am at work. (This is in part because our data servers and email shut down yesterday due to an ice storm somewhere west of here, and in part because by Monday I am to write a memo on the tax consequences of a certain form of partnership distribution, about which I have absolutely not one iota of prior knowledge or understanding. It’s taking awhile.) The baby is home, sick. Therefore, I have to bow out of a holiday party to which I’d been looking forward for weeks, ever since I got the beautiful invitation, and whose hostess, Kristen, is one of the best cooks and entertainers I know. My mouth is watering as I think about all the treats I’ll be missing. But what can you do — what if Little Buggy is crying and needs me and I’m not there?

Still, the day is not lost:  I convinced Tim to get a tree (even though we’ll be gone for a week at Christmas), which is being decorated even as I write (love the tree: hate to decorate it…always have). And we’ll have a fire tonight.

And sometimes when you walk around your neighborhood doing errands on a bitterly cold Saturday, you can see this:

I mean, I just have no idea. But since this “race” seemed to begin and end at the Pour House on Boylston, I imagine these people were fortified with a bit of liquid courage. (Kind of like Nude Olympics, no? Except a bit less nude, i.e., we were much tougher. Or drunker.)

Despite my decrepit cold, which refuses to go away, I’m grateful I had a long weekend to lounge around and try to recover.  Witness the scene below:  after seven (out of nine) Murphys descended on my house for pre-dinner cocktails — a whirlwind of wine bottles, wise cracks, and tales of teenage-Murphy woe (they were bad! Bad!) — I found myself alone on the couch (Tim had gone with them, of course; I stayed home with my Little Bug and my poor coughing self), and partaking in the most delightful night a tired girl could imagine:

Yes, that would be the SATC movie — which I’d not yet seen!! — and, yes, that would be a bottle of wine, despite my illness (because what is Nyquil, really? I figured I’d just begin the process a little earlier, and with the real deal). And that would be our fireplace, the reason — despite drafty windows and the occasional mouse — I could stay in our apartment forever.

As I settle in with MSNBC (we are addicts) and my laptop (to work while watching returns) on this historic night, a few pictures from the day. 

The one-and-a-half hour line to vote at the Boston Public Library at 7 a.m.

Little Bug and her dad stand in line.

I spent the afternoon at WilmerHale answering an Election Protection hotline, where voters (mostly in Massachusetts) called in with questions such as “If I moved and didn’t re-register at my new address, can I still vote?” (If you’ve moved in the last 18 months, you can go to your old polling place. If you moved less recently than that, you need to go to your new polling place and fill out a provisional ballot. Which, unfortunately, probably won’t be counted.)  There was a mishap in Cambridge this morning where the election workers showed up with the wrong voter registration lists, so people who had voted in the same place for years were told they were not registered.  That was solved, but a lot of people had to cast provisional ballots (although those most likely will be counted).  Some people were kind of crazy (“Can you see if I’m registered? I’m not? Well, I’d like to register now and say I’m voting Republican!”) The lawyer working the phones next to me (someone I know from my PPLM work) kept getting really interesting calls: four-hour waits in Chinatown, white powder discovered at a polling place in Rhode Island.  My calls were fairly tame.

I’m giddy with excitement.  I love election night, even when it’s just a year of Congressional races.  I remember spending 2004 with the Blocks in Jamaica Plain, a rather glum night. 

I received an email yesterday from a Boston lawyer I know — a successful Renaissance man whom I might have guessed was, like many successful lawyers I know, lured into the Republican fold by his distaste for having his hard-earned wealth taxed.  Instead, he wrote this eloquent request:

“The time is finally here to cast our votes to elect our finest President since Franklin Roosevelt.  One equipped, as FDR was, to return America to a Republic placing its citizens’ welfare above that of the wealthy and the powerful.  An America where “sweet reason” is the coin of discourse and we regain the respect of our fellow nations.  I believe we all want to say to our children and grandchildren, “we stood with Obama on election day” and therefore I hope and trust you will!  
PS:  For my Republican friends, its not a vote for either Party, but for a fresh start for America.

Exactly.

Obama baby.

…and he bringeth glad tidings from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners!

Now I can toss 156 pounds of BarBri material that I’ve been keeping under my desk just in case.

Seriously, though. It is a HUGE huge relief. Hugehugehuge.