What a perfect summer evening! Walking home through Boston's North End , we stop for fried calamari so good you wonder why you ever bother to order it anywhere else. Up the street, the road is blocked off in preparation for the weekend feast of the Madonna Della Cava Society, and the Cannoli Girls booth (we fill it fresh for you) is already up. We take a left and walk past Old North Church into the park at the bottom of the hill. The night-lit bocce courts are full for this men's only, and apparently Italian men's only, sport. We stop to watch some very skilled ball handling, where calm and quiet finesse contrast with the more volatile scenes we sometimes encounter in the North End. After watching a bit, we continue along the path at the water's edge, and then turn right across the bridge towards the Bunker Hill Monument and home. Sometime when Meg and Mike come to visit I hope we can share an evening like this with them.