MISQUAH — Wednesday morning there were children on the sidewalk at ten past eight for the first time since June and I will tell you that four grown people at this table went to the window. Not to look at anybody in particular. Just to look.

Then Thursday Donna Skoglund came in at half past six, before she had told hardly anybody, and sat down and said she had made a mistake in the minutes and that it was going to be in the paper. She had her coffee and she told the table herself, which is the fastest way to publish anything in this town and which I believe she knows.

Vern read the motion aloud on Friday for the second week running, and this time there was something in it, and the table went at the number the way it went at “not to exceed” in August. Positions were taken. One person held that the board should have fixed it and one held that a vote is a vote and one held forth for some while on a subject I could not identify and neither could he by the end.

Nobody at that table said one unkind word about Donna. I want that in the paper too.

Friday morning was forty-one degrees and three people mentioned it before seven. That is the first cold morning of the year and it always produces the same conversation, which is whether it is early. It is not early. It is September. It is never early and we say it every year.

My jars are still on the shelf and I have stopped looking at them. That took nine days.