Ramble with Storm: Dog day cicadas & The New York Times ruminations

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

With the air still thick and tropical, thick and tropical as Floridian summer air, I picked up The New York Times off the sidewalk and flipped it to the porch.

My wife bought me a weekend test subscription to it for our anniversary and I have kept it up. Of course I rarely have enough time to make much of a dent in it.

But I like newspapers.

But not wet ones.

With the remnants of Hurricane Isaac still lingering, it feels like a shower or quick thunderstorm could be squeezed out at any point and I didn’t want to come back to a sopping paper.

On radar it looks like the eye. or probably more correctly at this point, the center of circulation was near Vandalia in Downstate Illinois.

This stuff fascinates me. I check the radar in times like this every hour or two.

I remember when the Sunday Times would have had to be lugged up to the porch. Now, the Sunday Sun-Times is heftier.

And I remember when the Sunday New York Times had a regular outdoors column. Of course it was usually about fly fishing or grouse hunting. But it was usually wonderfully written. I miss it.

Times change.

The remnants of Isaac lumber (and I believe that would be the precise verb) across our area and to the south.

A lumber and a lug in the same day.

The remnants have their impacts. I had planned to hunt doves yesterday in the afternoon with an acquaintance, but that got shuttled off. We ended up with 2.1 inches of rain so far.

I heard very little shooting either yesterday or today. Early Canada goose and dove hunting both opened yesterday in Illinois.

I hope to sneak out this afternoon for dove hunting. We shall see. It is also a holiday weekend and I have family duties.

This morning, a few Canada geese honked low over town and flew in singles and pairs in odd directions, so I assume somebody was shooting at them, either early this morning or yesterday.

Plenty of doves sat on the wires.

It was early enough when the meathead and I set out for the early morning silence. Until you listen close enough, then you realize how many sounds from insects and birds we miss with the constant noise of our civilization.

And I wondered why dog day cicadas only seem to call toward evening.

I don’t know the answer. But I set off on the ramble each morning in part to have time to ask myself those questions.