Last night my husband and I were walking down Park Street  when, half a block in front of us, lights flashed, a warning bell sounded, and the crossing gates descended, signaling the approach of a commuter train. Which almost immediately roared past, furiously blasting its horn again and again.

“But they never blow their whistle here,” David commented.

“So you didn’t see that woman duck under the gates and cross the tracks?” He hadn’t.

“Those whistles were  about her, I’ll bet. And how angry she made that engineer.”

Angry. And scared.

Like so many of us right now. And accounts for, I think, “our society’s open welcome of public displays of hatred,” as a letter -to -the- editor  writer noted in this morning’s Boston Globe.