Peter Watchorn is a professional harpsichordist, an Australian-born US citizen, and a 21-year resident of Cambridge. He was very surprised last week when he was mistaken for a terrorist…. A tip from a passenger and a manhunt that followed disrupted the T’s Red Line for about 13 minutes during rush hour Thursday morning, as police surrounded a train with bomb-sniffing dogs. It also forced Watchorn to miss a business trip to Buffalo while he was being questioned by State Police.
Peter Watchorn is an awesome guy. A number of years back, I somehow ended up at an informal concert/party he was throwing in his apartment. Knowing even less then than I do now about Baroque music or the ins and outs of harpsichord technique, I was a little uncertain about whether I’d make any conversation at all. But Peter pulled out a pristine vintage RCA no. 50 suitcase Victrola and spun a few priceless 78s, and we ended up chatting about local sources for proper needles. Wonder what his anonymous tipster would have made of that conversation.
Isn’t it “wem suchet ihr”?
My “St. John” score says “Wen”—do I need to upgrade to the <>Urtext<>?
Nope–I just checked an online Luther Bible and it’s “wen.” Turns out I’ve been wrong about that for many years.
Arguments over correct German cases pale against the real point of this thread: civil liberties and how they mesh with the need for legitimate security that protects rather than threatens.The chief of MBTA security, quoted in the Boston Globe, declared himself “satisfied with the outcome” of this embarrassing debacle, with its elements of Kafka and Keystone Cops. I, on the other hand, as the unwilling star of this drama, am far from satisfied. My story is not personal: I was everyman (and woman), and this could just as easily have happened to anyone else. I suffered temporary embarrassment and inconvenience, but the worst aspect, and one that should disturb all, citizens and non-citizens alike, was the arbitrary suspension of those fundamental civil liberties that I, like all reasonable people, take for granted. This was the most disturbing aspect of this entire fiasco. The MBTA clearly owes me a public apology, on behalf of the general public they have also inconvenienced, and whom I represent. I will seek it on behalf of all of us, but, more importantly, the T management owes it to all MBTA users to review its absurd policy of accepting unsubstantiated gossip as evidence of a threat. This episode has made clear that witch hunts do not make us more secure, just more paranoid. A weakness has been exposed here. Is the MBTA sufficiently mature and self-critical to rise to the challenge that it now faces in pursuit of the greater good?