New York City, January 29, 2015

★★ A line of brown haze in the northwestern distance spread up onto an ever-graying blue sky. The snow was still white, in general, but smudged with gray or pockmarked with yellow; the cold was damp and seeping. The children getting out of school lobbed a desultory snowball or four back and forth across the sidewalk. Snow-weighted bamboo hung low over the garden wall of the fancy apartment building, making it necessary to duck under or steer around. Trash bags were piled on top of the snow on top of the older piles of trash bags. A broken saucer sled lay beside them. It was not so cold that the garbage didn’t reek.