Trumansburg Dispatch

trumansburg--

I don't have my camera with me today, which is just as well, since I am frustratingly unable to capture what I want to most of the time.

On a related note, I am trying to notice more. Here is a list of things noticed today on the roundtrip journey between library and pizza place:

-- Surprised looking pumpkin with squiggley mouth ... Well rendered!
-- Leaf impressions in newly laid sidewalk ...Thank you, guerilla beautifier!
-- (Potentially) enchanted tree
-- Pumpkin impaled on the short spire of one of the playhouses at the Colonial Laundromat's playground. Humorous reference to this legendary
occurance?
-- Italian news channel on at pizza place. Do they always have this on?
-- Is that a pile of snow behind the phone company? No, it is a pile of transparent garbage bags filled with mostly white garbage
-- No mailboxes ... which seems out of character for this normally convenient town
-- Black cat, not crossing my path
-- One of the other dogs who participated in the Tburg 5k

While staring out the window of the pizza place instead of reading, I was reminded of a job I used to have where I was required to knock on a set of designated doors in a designated neighborhood every twenty minutes until someone was finally home or opened up. Since people are often not home during the day, or don't want to talk to you if they are home, and it does not always take twenty minutes to circle a few blocks, I spent a lot time sitting in my truck reading the paper or looking out the window. This experience convinced me it might be pretty easy to be a detective, or at least to stalk someone. An amazing amount happens when nothing is happening. People walk to the corner and come back with whatever they got there (a meal, beer, a kid); they leave the front gate of their apartments ajar, they go to their cars-- so you know what they drive-- they walk their aging dogs. Also, they don't seem to wonder why you are sitting in your parked car. But maybe that's just cityfolk.