I love old pictures - this one comes from a website called shorpy.com, and I thank Melissa Hoffmann Lajara for bringing it to my attention. Check it out the next time you have five or six hours you can spend.
What I find captivating about old pictures is that they are windows into vanished reality. This picture, particularly, has so much going on in it: people (lots of them, all way overdressed by modern standards), plants, hats, a cameo broach, boats, a Ferris wheel, telephone poles, a clam chowder booth, all of it was happening and existed at one point, the split second the photographic plate was exposed to light. Memory fails or revises the past; words, while very good at some things, can't capture all the details and by their nature imposes interpretations on what they do describe. I wonder how many people in Kingston today are descended from those in the picture, and I wonder if Kingston Point will ever be as vibrant again as it was then.
Look long and deeply into old photos. They are wormholes, irreplaceable and priceless in their way, between where we are now and a relentlessly receding past.
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