Summer

I'm starting to see why people move slower in the South.

This is my first city summer -- save for a summer spent in Burlington, Vermont, which just doesn't get as hot and nasty as here, I've been mainly in the woods. And even on the hottest days you move faster there than you can here. I took the T into downtown Boston yesterday -- got off at Downtown Crossing, then walked for a good hour, trying to get my bearings. I meant to figure out how to walk to Newbury Street but didn't quite get there. I did manage to find Chinatown, Beacon Hill, and (almost) Faneuil Hall and the North End. Ended up in the Back Bay. It was definitely meandering, partly because I was wearing bad shoes but mostly because it was just hot and muggy and like moving through pudding. I just did another pudding-walk into the Square for a bedwetters'-special size iced coffee. Noticed some pretty pink and white hollyhocks planted along a chain link fence at an auto body shop, and a fat brown sparrow eating the mulberrys falling off the trees in my front yard.