Rambling Harbor — Evening Edition Ramble AKA WTF Again

Tonight’s tide brought in a story I wish I didn’t recognize.

Evening settles over the Harbor like a worn jacket, the kind you keep by the door because it knows your shape better than you do. The light goes soft, the gulls quiet down, and the world finally stops shouting long enough for you to hear the small truths rattling around in your own chest. That’s when the news found me tonight — not with a bang, but with that familiar sting that comes when history gets pushed around like furniture someone’s tired of looking at.

Another round of funding carved out of Black museums. A Black heritage sign quietly taken down in Boston, as if memory itself were something optional, something you could tuck away when it makes the wrong people uneasy. It didn’t surprise me, but it sure as hell set something off — not a blaze, just that low, steady rumble from a place that’s been paying attention for too many years.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve felt that rumble. A few years back, I resigned from an organization I’d given time and heart to. Not because I heard the man say anything — I never did. This was all online, all at a distance. But then I read he was running for political office in Texas, and one of his proud public stances was opposition to what was then being called “critical race theory.” That was enough. I didn’t need a speech or a meeting or a debate. I just knew I wasn’t going to stay in a place led by someone who wanted to shut down the teaching of systemic racism and the harder truths of American history. If the truth makes you uncomfortable, maybe the problem isn’t the truth. So I walked. Quietly. Cleanly. And I didn’t look back.

And now here we are again, only the stage is bigger, and the stakes are heavier. Grants pulled from the Massachusetts Museum of African American History because the work doesn’t “align with priorities.” Heritage markers taken down like they were never there. Museums and cultural programs frozen out because they dare to tell the story straight. And the language is always the same — “divisive concepts,” “ideological concerns,” “restoring sanity.” Whenever politicians start talking about restoring sanity, you can bet they’re about to erase something.

It’s the same old dance: erase, rename, sanitize, repeat. Pretend it’s about budgets. Pretend it’s about neutrality. Pretend it’s anything except what it is — a slow tightening of the blindfold. And the people doing the tightening always swear they’re the ones protecting us from indoctrination. Meanwhile, the museums they’re defunding are the ones holding the receipts, the records, the stories this country has spent centuries trying to bury.

And what really gets me is the déjà vu of it all. I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve walked out of rooms — and online spaces — over it. And now it’s happening on a national scale, with institutions and memory and public truth on the line. Every time someone says “critical race theory,” what they really mean is “stop telling the parts of the story we don’t like.” Every time a sign comes down, or a grant disappears, they’re hoping the story goes with it.

So here I am, evening deepening over Rambling Harbor, the tide pulling at the edges of the day, and I’m thinking about how fragile memory becomes when people in power decide it’s optional. I’m thinking about how many times we’ve had to fight just to keep the truth in the daylight. And I’m thinking about how history isn’t fragile at all — but apparently some people are.

That’s the ramble tonight. The Harbor’s quiet, but the headlines aren’t. And somewhere out there, the truth is still trying to speak, even if someone keeps reaching for the dimmer switch.

From Rambling Harbor, I ask again: what do we do now?

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