Guys at the gym, a gat, and the North End

We're late this week, though not for lack of news...for lack of words. Sometimes it can be hard to know what to say in face of all this madness in our world.

We either visit ladies-only gyms or not at all (just a personal choice), but we've heard stories about this before. Check out this video from Slate.com about being harassed at the gym. We're relieved the advice isn't "ignore it," at least not in total. Ignoring - nee ignorance - has never gotten us anywhere.

In our own city this week, police have learned more about the string of assaults in the North End. These sketches, released by the BPD, depict the potential attacker. Women are being encouraged not to walk alone, and the police are also offering free self-defense courses. We don't want to hate on efforts to keep us safe, but wouldn't the money be better spent on more fuzz out there working the streets so that we don't have to take this on ourselves? If we're going to live in a police state, it should at least work to our advantage once in a while.

And in what is also the most disturbing incident of street harassment to date, a woman was shot and killed after refusing to hand over her phone number to an unknown man. We see guys get aggressive about digits on the subway here in Boston, but murder? She didn't write for that.

Like we said, hard to find the words. But we keep having hope.