From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
I took a youngish couple and their children -- one who is three, the other six -- to a beautiful beach on Buzzards Bay last weekend and watched the family play on the sand and in the almost-lukewarm water. The children were oblivious to time and unstressed by worrying about such things as the looming school year and the coming of colder weather. They were, as people say, “in the moment’’ -- in a kind of paradise of beauty and safety. Would both remember the day, if hazily, decades hence?
An old friend of mine, who lives near the beach, happened to be there staring out toward Cuttyhunk. His wife recently died. We talked a lot about the passage of time as clouds moved in from the west to obscure the blue skies we had enjoyed for the first couple of hours on the beach and the kids shouted and splashed with joy.
“Summer, “ by Joaquín Sorolla (1904)
Fall Webworm nest
I love New England’s quirky seasonal signs, such as the Fall Webworm, a moth that in its larval stage creates bizarre webbed nests on tree limbs in the late summer and early fall. Some people hate them but they don’t hurt trees and look very pretty when dew and rain drops are on them. They’re like acorns on the sidewalk, goldenrod along the roads and asters in the gardens – a first course of autumn before the leaves begin turning colors.
