My head's still in Boston ... I guess it's been partly in Boston for twenty-five years, as that's how long ago I lived there. I don't know how that happened — how so much time passed, both slowly and quickly (I won't say it flew) — but maybe it explains diminishing brain power. Maybe we leave bits and pieces of consciousness in all the different places we've been and lived. Or not ...
But back to Saturday, when Mr. Betty and I were walking through Boston's North End before heading across that very pedestrian bridge (beside and beneath the stellar cable-stay bridge) to Charlestown: I kept seeing stars. On buildings, I mean (and not those new-fangled ones one can pick up at Home Depot). What was their purpose?? Some sort of colonial decoration?? I/we also kept seeing shutter clips (if that's what they're called) — those lovely old s- or f-shaped things that look like musical notation — but very few actual shutters ... as, really, once the wood has decayed, why go to the trouble of replacing it/them (the shutters), thus committing oneself to maintenance forever??
It was only after we passed by, stood back, saw how everything aligned, that we got it (we think): the stars were structural and/or used to line-up the bricks. They were washers, in effect, beneath the heads of bolts that helped hold the buildings together. Having had the crumbling brick chimney on our own home (in Newport) taken down and rebuilt in the past year — and adding shutters, however senseless, just because they belong there — we're attuned to such matters. So, it felt good to figure that out (the role of the stars). To relate. Though we had a hard time relating to the sight of Boston's Traffic Tunnel Administration Building. Certainly, traffic is a big deal, especially in a big city known for something called the Big Dig, but this building had a gold dome!! I mean, sense of purpose is nice, but that struck me as self-important, a tad over-the-top ...
