outside in the garden

Saturday, December 07, 2002

 

The Thursday after Thanksgiving, we had another big snow. Work let out early, I presume because the schools let out early. After being at home for a while, I was itching to go out in the snow and see how things were downtown.
I called a friend and invited her to have supper with me at a local pizza place. Then I hopped in the car (ok, I spent 15 minutes sweeping snow off, and that was no hop ) and drove down to Main Street. The plows had been out, and passage was not too difficult. But unlike earlier when the traffic had been quite heavy as workers were sent home, at 4:30 the streets were rather peaceful, with the odd plow truck, only an occasional motorist, and more pedestrians than usual.
I swung past the pizza place and sure enough its lights were on (they were doing a booming take-out business, but had very few walk-ins) and the food Co-op was still open. So I went over to the Co-op and picked up my few groceries and inquired about the peace vigil. The vigil would go on as usual, I was told.
So I met up with my friend and we walked together over to the corner of Main and Jackson street for the peace vigil and sure enough several people were there already standing in the snow.
I stayed not quite the whole hour and saw a surprising amount of traffic - more than I would have guessed. We got our share of encouraging honks and waves plus one or two shouted insults.
The talking and laughing went on as the snow continued to fall. Peace vigilers are a cheerful lot of people, despite the seriousiousness of their reason for being there, and every vigil seems in a way like a social event.
If by chance you are interested in joining a peace vigil, there are several weekly one around Connecticut, and you can check their times and locations at the Crows Net peace page.
On my way back to the pizza place I nearly fell on the sidewalk, but did not actually go down. We had hot chocolate and a light supper and went home feeling rather satisfied.

Palema 6:38 AM