Author Dennis Lehane: Boston Will Not Be Defeated | Here & Now

Author Dennis Lehane: Boston Will Not Be Defeated | Here & Now:

"“If you think you’re going to change the culture here, you really picked the wrong town.”"

I admire and envy this strong sense of place, of home. As a Navy brat, often moving, I never got it. The best I did was Pasadena, which still feels more like home to me than Portland, where I've lived for over 30 years.

Early in my career, writing plays set in small Oregon towns, something new, I was praised as "an Oregon playwright" and it was assumed I was born and raised here, so authentic were my characters and stories. Nope. I'm a good observer. I finally set the matter straight in an essay called Confessions of an Oregon Playwright, which was commissioned by a magazine and later anthologized.

As an old man, I miss a strong sense of home -- and of living far from the only two places that really felt that way to me, Pasadena and the southern Utah desert, with its Goosenecks of the San Juan River, I have a vague feeling I'm being punished for something.

Since apparently I'm going to die here, I hope it's during one of the 14 days of the year when it's warm. I don't want to die in the rain.