I took a long walk yesterday with my friend Markus from Tübingen, Germany, who is in town to get his MA in English. He had been staying in the YWCA (he claims not to have known what the “W” stood for) while looking for an apartment. He found one, but when we met at Back Bay Station yesterday he said he had to go back to the YWCA to leave his phone number for someone there. So we headed in that direction.

When we got there I waited outside on the corner of Berkeley and Appleton for him. I’ve been over there countless times through the years, but it’s really not until you find yourself just standing there looking around that you see things. And I’d just never really had occasion to stand around on that particular corner before. So when I looked across the street and saw this:

I was sort of surprised. Was it once a synagogue? When I got home I did a little research. The only mention I could find online was a brief one from The Boston Walks “Jewish Friendship Trail” site, that listed Berkeley and Appleton as stop #4, and said of the intersection simply:

“…near the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets, we can glimpse a vivid reason why Jews felt comfortable occupying several communal buildings at this intersection. Here, in the first floor of the Theodore Parker meeting house, Adath Israel ran its Sunday school beginning in 1875.”

If this is the Theodore Parker House–and it may or may not be–I don’t know why it would have a Star of David figuring prominently in the design, since Parker was not a Jew. He was an abolitionist, transcendentalist, deposed Unitarian minister (you know he was radical if he got chucked out of the Unitarian Church), and finally head of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston, whose Appleton Street Chapel was built at the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets around the time the building in the picture was.

So, my curiosity is piqued. If anyone knows anything about any of this, give me a shout.

Marcus joined me after a few minutes’ musing on the street corner there, and we headed to Back Bay, eventually making our way through the public garden, for a stroll on Beacon Hill, where I noticed this in passing:

A found phallus. Just thought I’d share.

We walked from there to the Charles and found a park bench, and Markus ate a plum. And we watched the sky:

Then we decided to go to Cambridge. So we walked to the Charles/MGH T station. It has yet to be automated, and here, again, the T’s utter incompetence in this process was on glorious display. We could not use our Charlie Tickets, of course, and found ourselves scrambling to come up with change. Markus got his token, and then I handed the man in the token booth two dollar bills–I am absolutely sure of it–and asked for “one, please.” I got two tokens, and fifty cents back. For some reason. I didn’t complain. Seventy-five cents a trip seems totally reasonable to me. I think that’s about what the T’s worth these days. I felt somewhat, slightly–but only slightly–compensated for all the inconveniences. It could be a secret policy of theirs, to quell the fury of the masses with little random giveaways like this, making you sort of complicit in the conspiracy. I mean, you sort of think, OK, the incompetence is bearable if I get a free ride out of it occasionally.

In Cambridge we walked around Harvard Yard. I showed Markus a swarm of tourists who had come all the way from Southeast Asia to polish John Harvard’s shoe, even though it’s not really John Harvard. I asked him if he wanted to do it, too, and he said he would pass.

We had a quick bite to eat at the Friendly EATING PLACE on Mass Ave at Dana Street (roughly midway between Harvard and Central Squares). It’s been there forever, and as far as I have ever been able to tell, it’s no friendlier than any other EATING PLACE in the neighborhood, though no less friendly on the whole, either. The sign facing Dana Street is the most strictly accurate, reading simply “EATING PLACE.” Although people also talk and laugh and drink and watch the TV in the corner, and day-dream, and worry, and look at passersby through the window. But if you want to be all functional about it, I suppose it is an “eating place” first, and an all-those-other-things place second. The eats are, however, so-so at best.

So, we hopped back on the T at Central Square, where, of course, we could not use our tokens, and Markus’s Charlie Ticket was out of funds, and the train was coming, and I ran my ticket through, and next thing I know, Markus jumps through with me. No buzzers buzzed, no red lights flashed, and no one was in the station to do anything about it if they had. This was my first fare evasion experience (albeit a passive one) with the new automated system, and to be perfectly honest, it was painless.

Not that I myself would actively evade paying my fare, but I’m not one of those people who a bag of money drops out of the sky and lands on their heads and they go turn it into the authorities, either. You know, if the universe offers you a free ride, take it. It’ll all even out in the end. I’ve lost plenty of money feeding the T’s old token vending machines, and if the gods of the underground are seeing fit to pay me back a bit at the moment who am I to question their wisdom? Am I gonna spit in the eye of Providence?