The snow on the sidewalks this morning is excellent snow for footprints, rendering them in perfect detail. As snow is still falling, the tracks will soon be covered up, but for now each set of prints is easy to follow. What we have out there is research snow. Thus, after an hour’s field work, I can say definitively that the folks who leave the same size footprints I do and who had already walked where Rascal and I walked this morning, have much shorter stride lengths than I do.
From this observation arose the hypothesis that those folks might, in fact, be children. Sure enough, the tracks all turned at the cut-off to the school path. This led to a second hypothesis, that folks whose stride length matches mine leave larger prints. Evidence supported this hypothesis as well.
A third hypothesis was also borne out: people walking with dogs do not walk in straight lines. They meander all over the sidewalk, depending on where the interesting trees are, as identified by their dogs. Children don’t walk in straight lines either, because childhood. Research can be fun.
Cindy and I attended a concert in which our friend Rhonda performed this Wednesday afternoon. The ensemble is all strings, and the conductor, Dan Long, had selected an interesting program including a piece by Fanny Mendelssohn and one by Charles Gounod. The Mendelssohn was lovely and unfamiliar. The Gounod, on the other hand, everyone knew. It was “Funeral March of a Marionette,” which was the theme song for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” the television show of old.
Someone once quipped that an intellectual is someone who can hear the “William Tell” overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. By extension, that intellectual probably also doesn’t think of Alfred Hitchcock upon hearing the Gounod piece.
And, once again, Cindy had baked enough of four different kinds of cookies to present them to the performers and to the audience after the concert. I have such talented friends.
My husband and I went to a concert last Sunday, this one by the Dexter Community Band. The programming was “Holiday Celebration,” and included a guest vocal quartet and an audience sing-along. Our shared favorite presentation was the band’s encore, Leroy Anderson’s crisp and cheery “Sleigh Ride.”
Our other favorite part was the narrator’s hats. He wore a different one each time he introduced a piece. His first one was a standard Santa hat, red with white fur around the opening and a tail ending in a white pompom. The next one was like it except for the length of the tail, which extended past his waist. The third hat was quite the novelty. It had three tails, each of which was stuffed, so they stood out it curves around his head. The effect was rather like a fat crown with pompoms. The model after that had, instead of a tail or three, a big red conical spring on the top.
Then the narrator moved away from the Santa-hat variations, transitioning to a snappy red fedora with a white ribbon and a long front brim–rather dashing. He peeked out from the wing before debuting his next hat. This one was suitable for keeping his head warm in any weather, red with a white fleece lining and serious earflaps. He strode on stage with his final chapeau, a large, cylindrical, Cat-in-the-Hat in red and white.
He never said anything about his headgear. It was just schtick, value added to an entertaining concert. The audience loved it. There were even cookies afterward.
My husband and I made a Zingerman’s Bakehouse run this week. The parking lot and store were packed, so I opted to stay in the car while he went in to pick up our order. This afforded me ample time for people watching and listening to the radio. And while my sweetheart was inside the building, a man walked past, a large fellow wearing a kilt. He even had the long socks with flashes. His shirt was nothing special, but his hat was. It was a three-tailed red Santa hat, as seen at the band concert in Dexter.
On the way home, we caught a rainbow. Cayman Chemical has a blocky black building on Ellsworth, unremarkable except for a wall of tall, narrow windows on the west side. Next to each window is a vertical stripe of paint that you don’t notice from the road. But if you remember to look for it and turn your head at the right moment, you suddenly see the stripes, and they form a rainbow as you drive past. It’s a serious business’s lovely bit of whimsy.
20 December 2024