I went up to the lake this morning to do some reading and the ducks were out in force which made me thing of Trevor and thepopeswife and their stories about ducks. Perfect weather today with a few puffy white clouds in the sky. It was very peaceful at the lake, no sounds except the ducks and the buzzing of bees and other critters. At least at first.
After I’d been reading for a short time, some kids showed up somewhere nearby. I think they were fishing, but that quickly devolved into what can only be described as the discovery of the interesting properties of sound: they discovered their echoes. The discovery of your shadow is quiet. The discovery of your echo, is by its very nature noisy. These kids started out by screaming out nonsense words: “Bub!” “Wub!” Then they moved on to the “hello world” version of echo construction: “Hello! [Hello!]” This went on for a while with more and more elaborate phrase until finally (and I imagine, quite naturally), they ended up shouting out obscene phrases. Really obscene! If it wasn’t so funny, it would have been annoying. About this time, I decided to head to the other side of the lake, where there is a bit more shade, and as I walked past these kids, their mom had returned and was berating them for how embarassing they were, shouting out those things. That was even funnier.
On the other side of the lake, there is a bench built out of an old, fallen tree, and the plaque on the bench reads:
In memory of George Stern 1899-1993. He sat here enjoying the view. May you do so too.
I got comfortable on the bench (still hearing the echoes of the beligerantly angry mother yelling at the kids) and proceeded to do some more reading in the shade. Here I am sitting comfortably on the bench:
And here is how things look from my vantage point on the bench. (Ah, isn’t that a great view, the bright white pages of the book softly turning! Oh, yeah, the scenery in the background is pretty nice too.):
I stayed by the lake until noon and then headed home so that I could cut the grass.
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