Last night I sat on the patio, enjoying a cold beer at the end of a really long day.  It was pleasant to simply listen to all the sounds I ordinarily hear without thinking about them.  My aural environment here in Beverly (on Chicago's far south side) is very different from my old Rogers Park haunts at the other end of the city.

Crickets are a constant backdrop, with a few other insects chiming in from time to time.  It's much quieter now that cicada season is just about done.  Airplanes pass high overhead on approach to Midway Airport.  A police helicopter circles over small area a mile or two north, spotlight seeking out some unknown suspect.

An occasional car rolls by.  Most of them are quiet.  One blasts loud music, disturbing any sense of peace.  Two teenagers walk down the street, laughing and joking.

A freight train horn blares in the distance, warning someone to get off the tracks.  A few blocks from home, the locomotive of a commuter train gives a few quick toots of the horn, more likely a friendly hello rather than a stern warning.

Most of the time, it's just crickets.  I never really appreciated how quiet that could be until moving here from a block where the El rumbled by every few minutes most hours of the day, obliterating every other sound.