Christopher Columbus Park is a small stretch of green space overlooking Boston harbor. It also connects the North End, Boston’s Little Italy, with the touristy shopping, eating, historic district of Faneuil Hall Market Place. The park was established in 1974 thanks to the efforts of Italian-American business people interested in creating a new public space for people to enjoy. In addition to naming the park after Columbus, the committee also erected a statue in honor of the famed explorer. It might not come as a surprise to find out that by the early 2000s, the statue had experienced routine vandalization. In 2004 someone splashed red paint on Columbus and painted the word “murderer” on its base. Subtle. In 2006 Columbus was “beheaded for the first time” (emphasis mine). If you’re thinking “Well that seems a bit much,” let me give you some context for the kind of people you’re dealing with: In 1975 Boston fans instigated a mass riot outside of Boston Garden waiting for tickets to go on sale for Led Zeppelin. It got so out of hand that the mayor shut down the show and banned the group from the city. Imagine being one of the jerks responsible for getting one of the greatest music groups in the history of rock and roll barred from your town 4LYFE. So, yeah, statue beheading—very on brand, Massholes. Very.
Anyway, Christopher Columbus park is a sweet, quiet space with plenty of room to spread a blanket or pick a bench and hang out and stare out over the harbor for an hour or the rest of your life. It’s one of those underrated, overlooked little treasures of the city that I love to walk through. Especially as one of its features is a series of three long trellises spaced out along a concrete path bisecting the park. Thick greenery wreathes the trellises in the warm months. From November through April, they are covered in tiny blue lights that pulse softly in the evening gloom, like a thousand disco fireflies. In February the pathway becomes a tunnel of love with oversized hearts tacked to the stone pillars and pink and white heart-shaped lights dangling from each entrance.
I was in the park with some friends who had come for a short visit. It was raw, gloomy; the sky overcast in shades of gym locker grey, setting the stage for a late-season snowstorm due to move in later that night. Everything about this time of year feels hard. Bleak landscape with naked trees and greasy, matted stalks of plants that look like they’ve been boiling in the soup pot for too long. The word “slog” comes to mind in something of a bitter mantra. And I feel a bit guilty about that because I know nature is incubating, busy becoming, which is always worth the wait. I’m sure she can hear us all whinging and probably would like to say, “You try doing this gig like Ginger Rogers backwards and in high heels for a few millennia and see how you do!” Understood. And that’s probably why when I caught sight of these cheery, bright red hearts off in the distance I peeled off from the group and headed over for a closer look.
Along a series of enclosed flower beds one of the nearby schools had affixed bright red foam hearts to the thin wire fencing. The hearts were inscribed with messages of love, joy, compassion, and empathy. A different set of hearts hung on one end of the garden. Small wooden cutouts, the kind you get at a craft store, hung with ribbon like wooden wind chimes. They were also decorated with messages to friends, to family, to anyone passing by and taking the time to stop and read.
This is public art at its best—honest, immediate, engaging. In this case, the hearts were such a glad happening. I appreciated the intrusion, not only into the dreary February cityscape, but into my mood, my perspective. Simple gestures make profound impacts. You never know what you might say or do that will be the lift that someone else desperately needs. We’re never alone as we may feel. If we’re brave enough to be honest we’d admit that we all want the same things: to belong, to feel seen, and to know we matter to one another. And if we forget, the Universe reminds us.
Crazy anecdote about Led Zeppelin! Devastating.
I never got to see them live but have watched a few concerts on YouTube. :)