New York City, September 2, 2015

★★ The haze was starting to resemble a cheery fog, one invulnerable to sun. A woman reached through the fence around Sherman Square to pull seeds out of a withered sunflower head. The heat of the heat wave was present but somehow abstract; what registered instead was the dirtiness of the air. Only down in the subway did things truly swelter; the eight-year-old voted to hop into the air conditioning of a local train rather than waiting on the platform for an express. From the Flatiron, downtown was a gray blur, but in the other direction, the ray patterns on the fins of the spire of the Empire State Building stood out. By evening rush hour, the middle ground had sharped, but the smudginess persisted in the distance.