The torrent unstanched
Eight-plus inches of rain fell in eight days, and the governor of Massachusetts went to Methuen and declared a state of emergency.
Seven people were killed in Boston in seven days, and the attorney general of Massachusetts went to Marlborough and denounced the sale of fake guns.
It is apparently a lot easier to ignore Boston's rising body count than it is to ignore the Merrimack Valley's surging flood waters.
Whatever the merits of Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's new campaign against BB guns and air rifles, he launched it in the suburbs, when real bullets were cutting down real victims in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. Surely, as the state's chief law enforcement officer, he can distinguish the potential peril of faux firearms from the actual danger posed by real guns on the streets of Boston.
Reilly's ill-timed press conference last week, with its table display of phony guns, had the same air of unreality as the Boston City Council vote earlier this month granting a 16.6 percent pay raise to councilors and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the man who has been insisting for a year that Boston is too broke to hire desperately needed police officers to patrol its embattled neighborhoods.
To note the disconnect between political rhetoric and the real world is not to deny that the city faces genuine budget constraints or that fake guns are sometimes used in real crimes or even that city councilors might merit a raise.
To notice is to wonder why it is so easy for local elected officials to mobilize immediately against destructive acts of nature, even as they call interminable summits to wrestle with the deadly acts of man.
For Menino, certainly, there is no lack of compassion for survivors of the seemingly endless rounds of retaliatory shootings. Donning a black suit for yet another funeral in no way resembles slipping into a yellow slicker for the requisite televised stops in the flood zone. There was nothing inauthentic about the anguish on the mayor's face when he emerged from his visit last week with Isaura Mendes, who had just lost a second son to street violence.
Anger and sadness fueled a mothers' march for peace last weekend, but it prompted no pledge of funds from Beacon Hill or Capitol Hill to hire more police officers or to keep neighborhood recreation centers open later or to expand summer jobs programs.
Romney and Senator John F. Kerry went to the Merrimack Valley to promise relief for waterlogged basements. They did not come to Dorchester to commit themselves to reducing the number of Boston's grief-stricken mothers.
It is easier to fix a broken dam than it is to mend the frayed social fabric exposed by the escalating violence in Boston.
Just as the receding floodwaters in New Orleans revealed a host of problems too long ignored, this spring's relentless rains and fatal shootings are telling Bostonians something about ourselves and our priorities.
Officials in Boston know -- as do those in New York, Chicago, and Detroit -- that the guns wreaking havoc in their city are coming from states with lax gun laws. Where is the urgent push for federal laws that would thwart the gun traffickers?
New York City sued gun dealers in five states this week for selling firearms used in crimes in the city. The Rev. Bruce H. Wall, pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church in Dorchester, met with police chiefs in New Hampshire last year to try to stop the flow of guns. But why would we think such scattershot efforts could ever be enough?
If we do not expect the mayor of Peabody to rescue his city from the flood waters by himself, why do we expect so much from so few in Boston, when so much more is at stake?
When are we going to stop waiting for someone else to declare what we all know is a state of emergency?
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 
