Signs of the times

 Today I attended yet another Zoom funeral.

The woman who was buried and most of the people you see here are very dear to me. I don't know what you see when you see this photograph. I see a web of friendships and kinship that goes back a century in Boston.

There are funerals with eloquent eulogies. This was not such a funeral. Instead, the story of love, of old friends, of playing in the streets of Dorchester together during the Depression, of houses opened to refugee relatives and friends racing through backyards in Quincy, of caring for one another during hard times of one kind and another was told through the hard work of filling in this grave.

For a woman of few words and many good deeds, perhaps this was the proper funeral.

And from my neighborhood two signs.

This was painted in the early days of lockdown.

Today I spotted this stenciled onto boards covering a restaurant across the street that has gone empty for a couple of years.

I don't know if the letters were scribbled over by the person who put up the stencil or if the scribbles were added by a clever neighbor.