To live in Providence you have to be someone who enjoys and can even be moved by the magnificent desolation of an August Sunday. Students evacuated to summers elsewhere, it's locals only. A select few at that, you can walk for blocks without seeing anyone. It's calming, the most relaxed a place can get, you notice more this way. Flurried activity of birds and squirrels, music airily flowing from somewhere, architecture of downtown buildings brimming with untapped potential, the cool breeze off the river, the warmth of the sun, patterns of sidewalk shadows, coarse textures of weathered brick and metal soaked with passed time.

Even in the brightness there's a comfortable warm-grey glow and the beautiful silence of a small city in slow mode.