Michael Lichens finds that The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming makes him more appreciative of Boston, his adopted city. Excerpt:

My first impression of Boston was that it is an old city, carved by Puritans in a hostile place and refined by the toughest people I’ve ever encountered. New Englanders can come off as rude, with a huge chip on their shoulder. It can be mistaken as rudeness, but it is only their odd way of loving. They protect their hamlets, towns, neighborhoods, and cities much like the hero of The Napoleon of  Notting Hill. A boy growing up in East Boston or Bow, NH is likely to see their simple land as citadel worth protecting and loving. In fact, these last few days of carnage have reminded me that New England can teach the whole nations one simple truth: that a place is loved not because it is great but that its greatness is but a reflection of the love the people have poured out on it.

He talks about how the Boston Marathon bombings put his city in a certain light, and made him think about how much he loves it after all. I’m reminded of Walker Percy’s thought experiment, in which he asks the reader to imagine standing at the Parthenon in Athens on an ordinary summer day, in a scrum of tourists. How does Athena’s temple look? Now imagine seeing it from behind NATO lines in a firefight with Warsaw Pact forces — this was in the 1980s — and watching two Soviet rockets land on the Acropolis on either side of the temple. The next rocket will probably hit it square. How does the Parthenon look now?

BTW, one of my favorite threads ever here was the one that developed under the “New England, Grouchtopia?” post. I loved reading New Englanders talk about what they love about their place.