New York City, January 24, 2013

★★★ Not quite as shatteringly cold as the day before; even so, by now things other than water were frozen on the pavement. Coffee? Outside the bodega, bare painted plywood shelves stood where the flower display would have been. In the next block, on cafe tables, blossoms dangled slain from the rims of their flowerpots like the pompom fringe on a hat. Bursts of steam blew overhead across the street, against the featureless blue, dissipating almost entirely before they could reach the roofline opposite.