I was headed out for a walk — trying to fit in a little exercise in a very busy day — when I heard someone shout, “Dan! Is that you?” I turned around, and there was L——, standing on the sidewalk. It turns out his business is just a couple of blocks from our apartment, and we had never made the connection. We wound up talking about the kinds of things two New Englanders talk about on a grey February afternoon: ancestors (he’s a Meriam, and my brother-in-law is a Meriam), old cars, the Revolution, politics, antiques we almost bought but didn’t have money for at the time, eccentric characters we have known, New England history. Three quarters of an hour later, I realized I had better go if I were going to have any time at all for a walk. And we hadn’t even spent any time talking about Concord, where I grew up and his people come from. There’s never enough time to talk about everything you want to talk about.