Last week I took a lunchtime walk around Hartford, enjoying one of the few remaining warm fall days. It was drizzling, but still.

I crossed the tracks, literally and figuratively, into some neighborhoods I’d never been in. As we passed on the sidewalk, a young man admonished me “Don’t nobody need to be knowin your business.”

I headed down Asylum Street toward an area dominated by old insurance company buildings and an improbable collection of churches. There’s a multi-part installation of rocks with etched poems that contributed to the meditative and melancholy feeling.

A statue honoring the American School for the Deaf, and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. I stayed at Gallaudet University a while back for a meeting.

The striking, ugly St. Joseph’s Cathedral. I went inside, and there’s lots of nice stained glass, but it still felt like a tomb.

But I can always be cheered up by a nice pair of knockers…