New York City, April 7, 2016

★★★ Morning was mild and damp, poised between two unpleasantnesses. The green tinge on the trees on the crosstown street couldn’t keep the darker gray over the park from seeming Novemberish. The showers came, but never too severely. An umbrella out on Fifth Avenue went inside-out, but it was a very flimsy-looking umbrella. For a little while, the sky was blue over still-wet pavement. Then the blue raced off and the gray raced in again. The late light came in clear and certain, though, under variously gray on white, white and blue, and uptown gray on gray. The clouds were lovely and majestic. It seemed necessary to remark aloud that one, gold-tinged in the west, looked like an elephant, even if the legs took some extrapolation. The upthrust trunk was indisputable.