New England Diary

View Original

Reveling in the noise

Pre-Mass Pike map of the turnpikes of eastern Massachusetts, with the Worcester Turnpike following the roughly same path as the modern Route 9. Frank Kline would have used this map.

On the Massachusetts Turnpike

"Half the world wants to be like Thoreau worrying about the noise of traffic on the way up to Boston; the other half use up their lives being part of that noise. I like the second half."

-- Franz Kline (1910-1962), American painter who attended Boston University and summered and painted in Provincetown

xxx

"All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don’t like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece."

— Amy Poehler (born 1971), a native of the Boston suburb of Newton who grew up in the middle-class suburb of Burlington and who’s a TV actress, writer and producer

Burlington’s business district. The large town hosts many high-tech companies.