#democratic-values

#democratic-values

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was sworn in for her second term Monday, taking the stage inside Boston Symphony Hall to tout her administration's accomplishments over the past four years and to lay the groundwork for the next four. On the precipice of the nation's 250th anniversary, Wu delivered an inaugural address steeped in the history of the American Revolution. She framed the city's current work as a continuation of that original fight, casting Boston as a beacon of social connection in an era of isolation and as a bastion of democratic values under a federal government that sullies them.

We are creatures of symbols, and our architecture tells us who we are. John Ruskin, the greatest of architectural critics, observed that a nation writes its history in many books, but that the book of its buildings is the most enduring. The faith in order and proportion embodied in the Alhambra, the romance of modernity caught in the Eiffel Tower's lattice of iron-these are not ideas imposed on buildings but ideals that the buildings themselves express, more lastingly than words can.

At that moment, I was 13 years old, it was 1988-1989... I also wanted to pursue this dream, so I applied to the journalism faculty.