Winter Afternoon Light

It's not technically winter yet, and the weather has certainly not been wintry, except at night when the temperature drops precipitously. But the angle of the sun casts interesting shadows on the wall in the late afternoon as I sat outside enjoying the peace and quiet. Blessedly, the workers next door knocked off in the early afternoon.

I fled the beeping painters' lift as the last of the gravel (I hope) was deposited by the two beeping excavators, and in the car was treated to a discussion on the radio with a professor of biology at a southern university , waxing lyrical about our global sonic landscape. His argument was that by paying attention to the sounds of nature ,we can mobilize to protect it from human created noise. He was joined by David George Haskell who has written a book called "Sounds Wild and Broken:Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction". He didn't have to convince me, he just had to explain how one could hear the sound of a bird's wings over the cacophany of human created noise next door. He did give some rather unconvincing argument about how one could translate the sound of a diesel powered leaf blower into sunshine by thinking of dinosaurs, but by that time I wasn't listening...

I spent an interesting hour in the bookstore in pursuit of some books that might appeal to a twelve year boy. There was an older woman sitting in the back of the store with a little girl, her granddaughter? having a rather intense conversation about something the little girl wanted and the older woman was trying to persuade her that if she got that, she wouldn't get anything else. The little girl was having none of it and though I didn't want to lurk around evesdropping for too long, I was kind of fascinated. There was no crying and no whining, but it seemed to me that the conversation had gone on long enough and the stalemate  was not likely to be resolved with further discussion.

Another woman came in with two very excited children who ran around excitedly choosing things for awhile, but when the mother turned her attention to the task at hand, the kids' excitement devolved into running around between the shelves squealing. I heard the clerk, a very pleasant and attentive fellow ask, 'Are you ready to check out, or are you still negotiating?'

I spent the afternoon making some condiments for tomorrow's feast....maple syrup glazed pecans and cranberry sauce. I stopped by Dana's house where Peter was making a pumpkin pie and Dana was talking about the two different kinds of stuffing, the method of turkey roasting and how many potatoes will be required for mashing. I have to be grateful that I have definitely gotten off easy this year. All I had to do was clean the house.