Unfreeze the Charles

According to lore, the song "California Dreamin'" gained little attention in the all-important Los Angeles market when it was first released. But after it got air time in Boston, where people could truly appreciate lyrics such as "all the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray," it became a hit.

I thought of this story today, as I looked out my office window at the bleak city. My company's office space has a view of the Back Bay, the Charles River, and the southern border of Cambridge. We moved into the building in January, and ever since then, the Charles has been a cold hard strip of gray. Up until last week, anyway.

Last Wednesday we saw a large vessel pushing through what I had thought was still ice; my Belarussian co-worker joked that the craft was a Russian ice freighter. Monday was the first time I saw the water move, and then today, as snow drifted lazily down, one of my co-workers called out that there were sailboats on the Charles, braving the flakes.

Despite these signs of spring, some of us are still feeling the chill.

Earlier in the week I asked my overworked colleague Jon if he needed to pick up some lunch. He sighed in a way that told me he didn't have time and said, "Sasha, I need to go LA or San Diego today, too, and that's not gonna happen either."