It’s amazing what a day “out of Dodge” can do. On Fridays I usually work on my internet courses and do a lot of what I call of homecaring. That sounds much more positive than housework…less like drudgery, almost reverential. But I digress.
This past Friday we decided that a day trip was in order so we headed to Charlotte to visit Discovery Place, a science museum right on busy Tryon Street. Among the many sights that we beheld that day, the ones of nature affected us most. From our vantage point at Lola’s, a restaurant featuring “urban Southern” cuisine, we saw several itty bitty sparrows land briefly and prance daintily around before flying off to repeat the same behavior at another section of the sidewalk. Looking across the street, we were struck by the green trees whose branches and leaves were gently swaying in the breeze right in the middle of a thriving, bustling hive of a city. After lunch we took a short foray around the downtown area and saw small parks appearing like oases in the midst of the concrete city. The temperature began to rise, and mercifully a cool breeze made the heat more bearable…as did the brief spattering of raindrops that fell just as we arrived back at Discovery Place for an afternoon movie.
Another thing that we were reminded of is the awesome variety of humans (also part of nature). For starters, we saw people from India, the Middle East, and China. African Americans and Caucasians walked, talked, and laughed together. There were dozens of children dressed in t-shirts denoting the name of their particular schools, children with their parents, old people, young people, and everything in between. We saw couples holding hands, gaggles of teens and young adults enjoying their time together, and office gals and young professionals hustling to and from work. Important looking men carrying brief cases shared the sidewalks with mothers pushing baby strollers. There were also a few homeless folks, and at one point we saw a young woman offer her newly purchased lunch to one of them.
We left Charlotte late in the day, and within minutes we were cruising along the open highway with farmland, rolling hills, and tall trees on either side of the car. Quite a contrast to the busy, noisy metropolis we had left behind. Wonder what’s happening on Tryon Street today.
mom's musings 
