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  2020-11-02

  South End Resilience

  My name is Chandler Munson and I am a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Since I am apart of the NUin program, I am currently living in the Westin Hotel in Copley Square and am taking History of Boston as a culture class. Something that I've learned over the course of this semester is how to be resilient. The city of Boston has had to overcome so much with the current state of the Pandemic, yet people are still living their lives and bettering themselves. For my history class, I had to research the impact of Irish Immigration in Boston today, so I went with my group members to the South End. The South End was mostly inhabited by the Irish, so we went around finding historical sites and researching ways that the city has changed. One of the buildings that stood out to me was the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The Cathedral is a place of worship and was especially important to the Irish Catholics when they first came to Boston. When I saw the Cathedral in person, I was taken aback. It is truly a beautiful building with perfect landscaping and many religious statues. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Cathedral had to shut its doors and hold online services. This upset many who think of religious places as their safe places and where they can truly be themselves. After many months of following the social distancing and mask guidelines, the Cathedral is finally open to the public. Of course, there is limited capacity due to COVID-19, but the community feels whole again. Visiting the South End really drove home the idea that America can overcome any challenge that it faces and that we will be back and better than ever soon.