New York City, August 11, 2015

★★★ Wet windows let in the diminished light of morning. At commuting time, the most recent wave of showers had faded to something just heavy enough to be impossible to ignore. Clouds nipped away the top of the Empire State Building, leaving some different, squared-off landmark. The rain held off at lunchtime, and a cool gust blew. Sun and gray alternated through the afternoon. The waterproof jacket served as proof against the air conditioning. As evening approached, immense piles of gold and white swelled over the Flatiron; on the cross streets, the east was red-orange, the west banded in clear blue. In every direction were tiny airplanes, in sharp silhouette or abundantly illuminated. If you kept an eye down for resudiual flooding in the gutter, conditions were fine for walking. On Union Square, in the dark, someone shot an LED toy skyward, against a background of undulating dirty-purple clouds.