It was late summer in the coastal plain forest. At mid-day, it was quiet but not quite silent. There was a background buzz of flies, then the whine of a mosquito in my left ear. Swat! Then I heard a sound like water coming from the trees. A flock of grackles, hundreds perhaps, were drifting through the scene, making low clucking sounds that together form a sound like water flowing over rocks. They moved from tree to tree, in the same direction, left to right. Then something startled the...

  As if to hammer another nail into summer’s coffin, the sun this week sets before 7:00. The darkening sky reveals Venus tight above the southwest horizon, and while the evening star is brilliant at magnitude –4, it, too, is fleeting and sets shortly after the sun. As the sun and Venus set in the west, Jupiter rises in the east. Last week this gaseous giant reached opposition — its point opposite the sun as seen from our earthbound vantage — and so rises with sunset...

  In the first five minutes of The Town, a group of precision criminals, donning skeleton masks, knock over a bank. Everything is going smoothly until someone triggers the silent alarm. The slick crew devolves quickly into violence and kidnapping as they make a sloppy getaway with the loot and terrified bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall: Please Give). After releasing the woman and laundering their money, the crew meet in the neighborhood of Charlestown for a job evaluation. Crew leader...

  Dear Bay Weekly: I created an account to log in and vote in your Best of the Bay feature. The online ballot did not offer the Goods & Services or Food & Drink categories. It kicked me out after I filled out Life on the Bay and won’t let me back in. I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if it’s a glitch in the website, but I wanted you to know in case others are having a similar problem. Thanks! –Lea Hurt; lhurt@comcast.net Editor’s reply: Lea isn...