New York City, January 5, 2017

★★ An unambiguously wintry wind came to meet the outbound schoolchildren at the front door. The clouds and the cold were both solid and even. Broken pieces of ice crust tilted up out of a blackish slush puddle. Something like sun gathered strength until it really was sun, and a beam of light found its way off a south-facing fifth-floor window and into the office. Then that interlude, a day in miniature, passed, and the clouds thickened over everything again.