I spend a lot of time sitting at the computer and monitor I have in what my wife calls my "man cave" but I think of it more as a treehouse without a tree in the front part of our house (a year and a half after closing on the purchase I still get a charge out of typing 'our house') where I can hear the sounds of traffic passing on the street there at the end of our front lawn about twenty-odd feet from my chair and keyboard.
One of the sounds I enjoy listening to and for is the chiming of the hours from the clock at the Park Congregational Church up the street from where we live on the far side of the Chelsea Parade, facing the Teel House that borders Broadway (or as some of us say around here, 'the other Broadway').
When we moved the clocks forward for Daylight Saving Time, however it gets accomplished for churches and all manner of other buildings with chimes across the country, the clock on the church now chimes to mark the passing of each hour about eight minutes after the rest of us have noted its actual passing.
I'm not complaining. I have no idea what all is involved in the forth and back of setting clocks on buildings and I find it reassuring in a way that we're not all marching in lockstep around the clock, trying to catch its hands while it covers its face. I've actually started to hope, when it's my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil, that my passing can be marked by that clock thus guaranteeing me an extra eight or so minutes here on the ant farm with beepers. Such are the small things that make up a life.
Speaking of which when I awaken in the morning these days (I've become a slugabed in the two years since retiring so no more middle of the night rising and shining) usually at some point around seven, I open our backdoor for my sneak preview of the day ahead, weather or not (I've been working on my puns of steel, can you tell?).
I usually get to enjoy the song of a solitary wren perched on a wire that runs high above the crumbling brick wall that separates our yard from the side yard of the house on Chelsea Court behind us (I think it's their wall as I know it's not mine). Our daughter, Michelle, told my wife the other day she believes it to be a Carolina Wren singing to attract a mate but all I know (and care about) is that it's very tuneful and I'm glad there isn't a Tinder for small birds as I very much enjoy the song and certainly wish him the best in his search for happiness, or what passes for it among birds.
While typing this I had a random memory of someone I hold in high regard and whom I ended up meeting long ago for, of all reasons, because we were/are fans of the television series, Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I made her acquaintance when she was an editor at a local daily newspaper who didn't know what they had and allowed her to take flight just as the digital frontier was blossoming into its full promise.
She now paints with a palette of so many brilliant colors she's had to build her own stop among the ether's one's and zero's to have someplace to rest and catch her breath. I think, if memory serves me well enough this is one of her favorites, and I hope Dick Wolf would approve.
-bill kenny
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