New York City, September 29, 2013

★★★★ The rubber ball, bounced and kicked around the Sheep Meadow, picked up smears of mud and lost them on the damp grass and picked up new ones. Lumps of heavy gray cloud clogged up the otherwise blue-and-white morning sky, and humidity blunted the crispness. Broad waves of shade moved over the open space. A small child in robes was posed for a portrait session, balanced on a folding stool in the middle of the open lawn, while someone played a rattle drum. The six-year-old complained that his sneakers had soaked up too much water; the two-year-old had already splashed one foot in the puddle between roots of the spreading sawtooth oak. Acorns, glossy and near orange, were discovered and thrown. By afternoon, the brightness and the briskness were unimpeded. In the solid stone and glass facades overlooking Broadway, there appeared the occasional cavity of an open window.