A Great Day for Boston!

It was a great day for Boston on Monday (4/18). The sun glinted off the gold dome of the State House; the blue sky was glowing, in the radiant morning light a seemingly endless stream of bright yellow school buses glided down Tremont Street carrying hardy runners to the race. And then -- it was by many accounts the best Boston Marathon ever. Geoffrey Mutai took almost a minute off the world's record - an astounding feat. The USA's Ryan Hall came in fourth and still set a record time for an American. The women's race had an unbelievably dramatic finish as Caroline Kilel out sprinted American Desiree Davila (sounds like an opera singer to me) in the final stretch and then collapsed at the finish with a victory in her Boston debut. Davila was only two seconds behind Kilel and set a course record for US women herself. If you didn't catch any of this live or on TV check out The Boston Globe website ... pure theater.

And so what if the International Track and Field Federation doesn't recognize the Boston Marathon (it doesn't meet its topographical requirements -- something about too much "drop") -- we, (and the world) know, that the Boston Marathon is the oldest, most famous and by every count the best -- and it will always be so.

As if that weren't enough, it was announced Monday that the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism went to Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe for his "vivid and exuberant writing about art" and his knack for "bringing great works to life with love and appreciation." Smee, a native of Australia, joined The Boston Globe in 2008.  Yesterday he lauded the Globe for "a belief that the arts matter and that good writing about the arts is going to be an important part of newspapers as they evolve."

And, if even that weren't enough, congratulations to Opera Boston as Zhou Long won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Madame White Snake, premiered by the company in 2010.

Performance, strength, determination, creativity, innovation, excitement and empowerment for the arts - all alive in Boston.

-- John Conklin