Lance Mannion

It's raining when it should be snowing

Posted Christmas eve, Thursday night, December 24, 2020.

Traditional Christmas card with holly and mistletoe, circa 1880, via Wikipedia.

From the Department of Serendipitous Reading: Relentless, remorseless streaming and pooling of drowning rain and winds more like gales blowing across Midwestern prairies scouring the back deck are not sounds you like hearing in the dead of any night, let alone Christmas eve. Seamus Heaney provides the words for the weather report from here, meteorological and metaphysical---it's raining when it should be snowing, I'm reaching for books like a doubter, but even Heaney's own black letters are as cutting as holly and ice...

It rained when it should have snowed.
When we went to gather holly

the ditches were swimming, we were wet
to the knees, our hands were all jags

and water ran up our sleeves.
There should have been berries

but the sprigs we brought into the house
gleamed like smashed bottle-glass.

Now here I am, in a room that is decked
with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff,

and I almost forgot what it's like
to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

I reach for a book like a doubter
and want it to flare round my hand,

a black letter bush, a glittering shield-wall,
cutting as holly and ice.

---”Holly”, from "Station Island" by Seamus Heaney..

Weather Report. Friday morning, December 18, 2020: The storm left behind a pretty day and an album cover

Mined from the notebooks and lifted from the album, Friday morning, December 18, 2020. Posted Saturday morning, December 19.

Friday. 7:15 a.m. 25 degrees. Wind from the North. 6.836 mph. (Somebody at the weather site is being a stickler.) The northeaster blew through here in a hurry, dragging behind it what looks like's going to be a beautiful day. Roads are clear. No drifting. Won't be too bad going out in this, which I'm going to be doing soon. Right now, though, I'm sitting on the couch in the living room, drinking a second cup of tea, staring absently out the window, and waiting for Oliver to get ready to be driven to today's substitute teaching gig. Trying to decide if the tree is posing for next year's Christmas card or the cover of one of those compilation albums of Christmas standards sung by Bing, Frank, Steve and Eydie, and their like they used to give out at gas stations and which I listened to endlessly when I was a kid. I'm thinking album cover because that saves me from having to be ambitious next fall and get the order into Shutterfly in time to have the cards printed up in time to send out in December.

Weather Report. Wednesday morning, December 9, 2020: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

Adapted from the Twitter feed, Wednesday morning, December 9, 2020. Posted Wednesday morning, December 16.

Wednesday. 6:12 a.m. 28 degrees. Wind out of the SW, 8 mph. Up since 4:30. Ready to stumble back to bed and collapse. But sun's due up in an hour and I feel committed to watch it rise, and I take these commitments seriously because I believe Mother Nature will take it out on me if I don't. Too many margarine ads when I was a kid.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dena Dietrich, who played Mother Nature in the commercials, died last month. She was 91. She’s fondly remembered for those Chiffon ads from the 1970s and her catchphrase “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” but she was able to parlay that fame into a long, productive acting career as a character actress on television that extended into the mid-2000s.

Weather Report, Sunday morning, December 6, 2020: Gusted awake

Posted Sunday morning, December 6, 2020.

Detail from “Winter Brilliance” by Guy Carlton Wiggins, 1927, courtesy of the Catalouge Raissone.

Sunday. 7:00 a.m. 35 degrees. Wind 8 mph out of the NW with gusts up to 17 mph. One of those gusts just startled me awake. Nature didn’t want me to miss the brilliant morning we’re having before the clouds blow in. I wouldn’t have to walk far to see a brilliant winter scene like the one in Wiggins’ painting up top, just down the hill at the end of the street and into the woods, if I could walk that far. Ah, well. My camera’s not as good as Wiggins’ brush.

Weather Report. Friday morning, September 11, 2020: "Up!"..."Up!"..."Up!"...

Mined from the notebooks, Friday morning, September 11, 2020. Posted Friday morning, September 18.

Crow alarm: American Crow in flight, somewhere over Massachusetts, March 11, 2012. Ryan Schain, Macaulay Library, via the Cornell Library of Ornithology’s All About Birds website.

Friday. 6:27 a.m. 57 degrees. Crow giving this morning’s wake up call. Taking the job very seriously. Flying up and down the street, as if he’s going door to door. “Up!”...”Up!”...”Up!” “Now!” ...“Now!”...”Now!”...

How the weather was when young Theodore Roosevelt and his family visited Switzerland 151 years ago

Posted Friday morning, June 26, 2020.

Detail form “Blue Rigi, Sunrise”, a watercolor by J.M.W Turner. 1842. Tate Galleries via Wikipedia.

One hundred and fifty-one years ago, the soon to be eleven-year-old Theodore Roosevelt’s mother and father took him and his sisters and brother on a grand tour of Europe. In September of 1869, they were in Switzerland, having, David McCullough reports in “Mornings on Horseback,” his chronicle of Roosevelt’s boyhood, youth, and young manhood, “the best time for everyone.” But when they reached Lucerne, Theodore and his sister Ellie were both sick, Theodore “depressed and homesick, but then the trip to the heights of the Rigi rapidly restored all spirits.” Mittie, by the way, was Roosevelt’s mother Martha….

Known as the “island mountain,” the Rigi stands by itself above Lakes Lucerne and Zug, and to many thousand “sensitive souls” of the day the spectacle of sunset and sunrise from its summit, the Rigi-Klum, was the climax of a visit to Switzerland. The “incredible horizon,” as Victor Hugo called it, takes in nearly three hundred miles, an utterly dazzling panorama of Alps on one side (to the southeast) and on the other, beyond the lakes, the lovely Zurich countryside reaching to the Juras. Traditionally one went to the top in time for sunset, as the Roosevelts did, then stayed the night at the hotel to be awakened before dawn by an alpine horn, which the morning of September 4 sounded at quarter to five.

Rose immediately [Mittie wrote], but did not get out in time to see the first pink lights before the sun rising. All the high Alpine peaks visible...Litlis and its glaciers, Finisterahorn, Schreckhorn, Wetterhorn, Jungfrau, and Silverhorn and Blumis Alps. The Wetterhorn was beautifully peaked and covered with snow. A mass of thick clouds laid at the same level all around. The Rigi in the early morning, looking something as a glacier, with its rifts of gray color, completely hiding the lower world.

---from “Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt ” by David McCullough.

Weather Report. Tuesday afternoon, April 28, 2020: Practicing social distancing but not of the emotional kind

Mined from the notebooks, Tuesday, April 28, 2020. Posted Friday morning.

Marquee at the top of the driveway into Birchwood Elementary School in Niskayuna, New York: Be Kind. Be Brave. Be Positive. Be Grateful.

Friday. 4:54 p.m. 63 degrees. Bright, sunny, and warm. Today’s afternoon drive: north to Rexford, east to the Northway, south all the way to Western Ave, up on 155 into Niskayuna and back home. People out everywhere, taking advantage of the nice weather. Joggers, powerwalkers, strollers, stroller-pushers, bikers---including a train of three junior high school age boys, brothers, it looks like, all three have the same wild bushes of curly hair in need of cutting---scooterers, at least one skateboarder---a little girl out with her dad who is on foot, and not in the hurry she is. At one point, she has to stop and wait with an exasperated expression for him to catch up. Couples of various ages. No handholders or arm-in-armers. They’re maintaining physical social distance but not the emotional kind.

The view from the kitchen table this morning is all in lines straight up and down

Adapted from the Twitter feed and posted Friday morning, April 10, 2020.

[Another one for National Poetry Month.]

6:52 a.m. Another fine morning at the Old Mannion Homestead. Too chilly to sit out on the porch, though. 48 degrees, but the weather app says it *feels* like 36. So I'm watching the day begin at an angle from the kitchen, looking out through the doorway and out on through the porch's sliding door at a corner of the backyard

Can't hear the birds, or see any. But they're out there.

The view out the kitchen window is more straight on from where I'm sitting, but there's less to see, just a patch of woods and some trees "straight up and down", but it makes for a prettier picture, I think.

Those trees "straight up and down"? I'm cribbing from Robert Frost's "The Wood-Pile" there...

The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by…

Frost is my favorite dead American poet. “The Wood-Pile”’s one of my favorite poems of his, and one I can recite almost in full. The last four lines have always “pithed me right through the occiput”, as my favorite living American poet Steve Kuusisto has been heard to say when describing his happily startled reaction to a work of art, written, sung, recited, painted, sculpted, orchestrated, or danced. Here's the whole poem...

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

---“The Wood-Pile” by Robert Frost.

Filed under Morning Song.

Weather Report. Monday morning, February 10, 2020: Santa stands sentinel

Posted Monday morning, February 10, 2020.

Monday: 7:01 a.m. 32 degrees. No wind. Snow overnight. Weather app says it’s turning to rain but I don’t see it and the patter of drops on the back deck sounds like melt off the roof. Supposed to get up to 45 degrees today and tomorrow so it won’t stick. But for now it’s prettying things up, covering the grass and the rooftops in the neighborhood, settling in the branches. With Santa in the window, the view outside looks more like Christmas than Christmas Day did. The tree’s long down but we still haven’t completely de-Christmased. Nor, as you can see, de-Eastered. The calico bunny is a gift from Mom Mannion and isn’t going anywhere. The deer stays in the window all year and has every year since 2004, the then eight-year-old Oliver's Mother's Day present to Mrs M the first Mother’s Day we celebrated here. The other remaining decorations will go into their boxes this week, probably today. The schools have called a two-hour delay, but I’ve declared a full snow day for us and we're not leaving the house. None of us have to be anywhere anyway. So we’ll get to work this afternoon. But Mrs M has asked us to leave Santa right there. Her favorite chair is right next to the window and she likes to look up from her reading and look out and see Santa standing sentinel there, on the watch for approaching emotional storms and other bad weather for her soul.

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. Sunday morning, December 8, 2019: All the weather and everything I'm reading must converge

Mined from the notebooks, Sunday morning, December 8, 2019. Posted Sunday morning, December 29, 2019.

Flannery O'Connor, short story writer and novelist, and Catholic intellectual, on the front steps of her home in Midgeville, Georgia, in 1959. Photo by Floyd Jillson of the Atlanta Journal Consitution, via AP, via the New York Times.

Sunday: 8 a.m. 7 degrees! Correction: 9 degrees. Much better. Productive day so far. 1 mug of hot chocolate, 2 cups of coffee downed. 1 bowl of oatmeal, raisins and spice. 2 stories about last night’s Knicks game read. Knicks lost a heartbreaker to the Pacers, 104-103. Knicks could have tied it up and sent the game into overtime but Julius Randle missed a free throw with 0.1 seconds left on the clock. 3 poems by Charles Wright read---”Deep Measure”, “Thinking of Winter at the Beginning of Summer”, “Jesuit Graves”. “Jesuit Graves” begins with a weather report from the Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, Ireland, July 3, 1995:

Midsummer. Irish overcast. Oatmeal-colored sky. …

Glasnevin is the final resting place of many long-dead Jesuits, including the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The poem ends with what I took as a reference to one of Hopkins’ poems…

Whatever rises comes together, they say. They say.

The they that say are paraphrasing the line "Everything that rises must converge" and I took them to include Flannery O’Connor and I thought, “That’s where she got it. Of course.” O’Connor was a fiercely devout Catholic with a contrarian bent that sometimes bent toward the border of the heretical. She’d have made a good Jesuit. Hopkins would have been a source of inspiration. Turns out the title of her story and the collection that contains it were taken from “The Phenomenon of Man” by the Jesuit priest, philosopher, and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard’s writings helped persuade the Catholic Church to come around on the theory of evolution. I read “The Phenomenon of Man” when I was in college and understood about every third word. I still can’t tell you what the noosphere is exactly. I think his Omega Point, the point towards which everything that rises converges, is kind of like entropy but with intelligence. I think. He took the word from the Book of Revelation: "I am the Alpha and the Omega." Flannery O’Connor went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s one of the reasons I went there. So Wright’s they includes Teilhard and O’Connor. And himself, and, I guess, me.

Teilhard reached his Omega Point in 1955. O’Connor reached hers in 1964. She died of lupus. She’s buried in Memory Hill Cemetery in her hometown of Midgeville, Georgia. Teilhard’s Jesuit grave is not far from here in Hyde Park. It’s on the grounds of what was St Andrew’s-on-Hudson Jesuit novitiate. The Jesuits closed shop there in 1968 and sold the property in 1972 to...the Culinary Institute of America. If you go there and ask they’ll give you the key to the cemetery and you can visit Father Teilhard’s grave. Next time we’re in Hyde Park, I’ll stop and ask.

Somewhere in the house is a copy of “The Phenomenon of Man”. On a nearby shelf is “Everything That Rises Must Converge”. On another shelf is "The Oxford Book of English Verse". I should dig one or the other or all three out and do some reading. But weather reports shouldn’t require that sort of homework. I’m just going to have another cup of coffee and re-read Wright’s poem. Here it is...

Midsummer. Irish overcast. Oatmeal-colored sky.
The Jesuit pit. Last mass
For hundreds whose names are incised on the marble wall
Above the gravel and grassless dirt.
Just dirt and the small stones---

how strict, how self-effacing.

Not suited for you, however, Father Bird-of-Paradise,
Whose plumage of far wonder is not formless and not faceless,
Whatever you might have hoped for once.
Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, 3 July 1995.
For those who would rise to meet their work,

that work is scaffolding.

Sacrifice is the cause of ruin.
The absence of sacrifice is the cause of ruin.
Thus the legends instruct us,
North wind through the flat-leaved limbs of the sheltering trees,
Three desperate mounds in the small, square enclosure,

souls God-gulped and heaven-hidden.

 

P. Gerardus Hopkins, 28 July 1844-8 June 1889, Age 44.
And then the next name. And then the next,
Soldiers of misfortune, lock-step into a star-colored tight dissolve,
History's hand-me-ons. But you, Father Candescence,
You, Father Fire?

Whatever rises comes together, they say. They say.

---"Jesuit Graves" by Charles Wright, collected in "Oblivion Banjo: The Poetry of Charles Wright".

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. Sunday before dawn, December 15, 2019: Hot Chocolate Tree

Posted Sunday morning, December 15, 2019.

Sunday: 4:15 a.m. 40 degrees. Wind from the WSW in gusts up to 10 mph. Gust earlier moved the wreath on the front door, wire backing scraping against the portal. Calm now. Furnace roaring. Hot chocolate by the light of the tree.

Weather Report. Wednesday morning, December 4, 2019: What color weather are you having?

Posted Wednesday morning, December 4, 2019.

Wednesday: 6;56 a.m. 26 degrees. Wind out of the SW at 6 mph with gusts up to 9 mpn. Cloudy day ahead with a chance of a snow flurry this afternoon. 24 hours ago the scene out the window was tinted blue. This morning it’s silver outside. The weather on any given day isn’t just temperature, precipitation, clouds, and wind. It’s color and light. Not a snow day. No 2 hour delay. Errands to run and no excuse to avoid them. Another day on the road until after dark. But for the moment I get to sit here and enjoy the weather. How’s it by you? What color are you having?

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report, Tuesday morning, December 3, 2019: Nice to feel the world isn't pushing us out the door

Posted Tuesday morning, December 3, 2019.

Tuesday: 6:42 a.m. 26 degrees. Wind 4 mph out the North. More snow overnight. Still hasn’t let up. Flurries now. The view out the window is all in blue, the last of the moonlight and the first rays of the sun bouncing off the fallen snow. Mrs M having a slice of her breakfast favorite peanut butter toast. “Lance, there are worse addictions.” Mannion guys still asleep. Schools are on a two-hour delay. Means Oliver gets to sleep in but will get paid for a full day’s work. Ken doesn’t have class today. Mrs M and I feel relieved too, even though we have no place we have to be today. We treat snow days and school delays as if we've been given permission to stay inside and do nothing but relax and enjoy the warmth and comfort of home. A two-hour day isn’t as good as a full snow day, but it’s nice to feel the world isn’t pushing us out the door.

Weather Report. Tuesday morning, November 26 2019: Frost without poetry

Posted Wednesday morning, November 26, 2019.

Tuesday: 8:00 a.m. 32 degrees. Bright and sunny. No clouds. Strong shadows on the neighbor’s roof. Wind 3 mph out of the SE. Supposed to get up to 57 degrees later. Now there’s still frost. Frost on the car windows. Frost in the grass. Frost on the fallen outlining the edges and veins of the fallen leaves in white.

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. November 11, 2019: Cold with showers and a hundred percent chance of increased caffeination

Posted Monday morning, November 11, 2019.

Monday. Mom Mannion's back porch at the old Mannion Homestead. 6:46 a.m. 40 degrees. No wind. Not even a hint of a breeze. Out on the porch waking myself up by having coffee in the chilled air. Expected the cold to drive me in before I finished my first cup. Now finishing my second and considering a  third. A light jacket and I’m fine. Sun not yet fully up. There’s a squirrel making its way along the top of the wire fence in the far back of the yard, the squirrel making its presence almost visible by a squirrel shaped shifting of the shadows and the fence by inspiring the question “What else can be holding that squirrel shape up?”  But the leaves on the ground nearer in are as bright as copper and shine in the grass that’s as green as summer’s, and there’s just enough light to make these notes by. Chickadees buzz in the neighbor’s pines. Now there’s the sound of light rain falling on the leaves and rustling among the leaves on the ground at the foot of the invisible fence that might be two squirrels making their way in the opposite direction as the first shadowy one. The windows are misting over. I think I will have that third cup.

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. Sunday afternoon, October 20 2019: "Life's short, eat cookies" says the sign...Sorry, not when there are apple donuts fresh out of the oven to be had!

Posted Wednesday morning, October 23, 2019.

Sunday. Tantillos Farm Market. 12:26 p.m. 54 degrees. Wind NNW 1 mph. Cloudy, gray, fog over the orchards in the distance. Mist turning to rain turning to mist turning back to rain. Day started off a beautiful fall day, perfect morning for picking apples and pumpkins. But we were slow to get going and by the time we got to Tantillos it wasn’t the best weather for tramping out into the fields. But it was good weather for staying warm and dry inside the stand and breathing in the aroma of pies and apple cider donuts baking in the kitchen in back. “Life’s Short, Eat Cookies” the sign over the kitchen window says but we gave the cookies a pass and took home a dozen donuts fresh out of the oven, along with a half gallon of local cider and a cheerful-looking pumpkin picked off a table out front. Carving’s next weekend. The donuts and cider are already gone.

Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. Tuesday morning, October 15, 2019: A cardinal and a blue jay greet the day in their different idioms and the moon calls it a night

Posted Tuesday morning, October 15, 2019.

Tuesday. 7:10 a.m. 34 degrees. At the moment there’s no wind. Supposed to get blustery. 15 mph from SSE with gusts up to 24 mph. Clear sky fully light although according to the app it is only now sunrise. Moon’s still up, above the neighbor’s roof, white and nearly full, framed between the two large maples on her front lawn. Going to get up into the mid-60s later but it’s barely above freezing right now. No frost but when I go outside barefoot and in my pajamas to try---and fail---to get a better picture than the one I took out the front window and step out onto the lawn the dew-drenched grass is ice cold underfoot. A cardinal cheeper-cheeper-cheepers a ringing good morning. He’s answered by a louder blue jay screeching rustily as she flies between the trees, “Can it, Mr Cheerful!”. She’s late for work and the kids need to get up and ready for school.

Weather Report. Friday, October 4, 2019: It's fall. Do you know where your rake is?

Posted Saturday morning, October 5, 2019.

Mount Beacon, Dutchess County, New York, seen from the west side of the Hudson River. (We were traveling on the east side.) Copyrighted photo by Vijai Kalathur from his book Hudson Valley Illustrated.

Friday. 12 p.m. 61 degrees. Heading south along Route 9 after dropping Ken off at school. Approaching Fishkill, aiming to cross the river at Beacon. Leaves in the air over the road blowing straight at us but none slapping the windshield. Air we're pushing ahead of us lift them over the hood and roof or force them to veer off to the sides. The turnoff to the bridge is going to come up before we’ll be able to see Mount Beacon, but the Hudson Highlands are coming into view to the southeast. Think we’re looking at Quaker Ridge. Low gray clouds overhead and apparently stretching to New York City, but the sun’s breaking through to the east and shines on the ridge, lighting up the leaves on the trees on the hillsides bright scarlet and orange-red. Mrs M observes “There’s a sight that screams fall.” She re-thinks her word choice. Scream doesn’t connote how peaceful and comforting the scene is. “Maybe it whispers it.” I split the difference. “I think it just says it, matter of factly. ‘Hello, it’s fall. Do you know where your rake it?’”

Weather Report. August 27 2019: The blue-ing of Mrs M's hydrangeas

Posted Tuesday morning, August 26, 2019.

The bowl is full of coffee grounds, in case you're wondering what you're looking at. When I took this picture back in early July, they were slated for spreading around the roots of the hydrangea bushes by the porch. Like their gardeners, the hydrangeas here at the Mannionville Ranch like their morning jolt of caffeine.

Tuesday. 7:49 a.m. 51 degrees. Supposed to get up to 72 by this afternoon. Wind from the SSE at 5 mph. Cloudy but the clouds are high so it’s gray but not gloomy. No rain in the forecast. Thunderstorms tomorrow. Weather app predicts what I consider perfect summer weather for the end of the week. Sunny. Highs near 80 during the day, lows in the 50s at night. But fall’s coming on. Our flowers are showing signs. The blackeyed susans are doing fine. The coneflowers, though, are having a hard time keeping their heads up, and a few have toppled. The hydrangeas have blown. The few petals left on their withered blossoms have turned an ugly and burnt-looking pale pink draining to a lifeless white. But they were beautiful while they lasted. Bluer and fuller and heartier and happier-looking than I remember they’re having been in many years. Must be due to Mrs M’s tending. At the beginning of the summer I read that hydrangeas do best in acidic soil and that an environmentally friendly way to acidify the soil is to spread coffee grounds around their roots. Mrs M liked this idea and all season she’s been diligently following the advice. This has been good for her as well as the hydrangeas. One of the symptoms of her tumor and hydrocephalus that I missed was that she lost interest in her gardening, which she enjoyed almost as much as her cooking.. I attributed it to her work schedule making her too tired and keeping her too busy. She’s not back to form, yet. Maybe next spring. But tending the hydrangeas has made her happy, and the coffee grounds may have done the trick, although, like I said, I give the credit to Mrs M.

Here’s what the blossoms looked like at their bluest in the middle of July…

Filed under How the Weather Was and Diary of Her Recovery.

Weather Report. Saturday evening, August 24, 2019: Summer waning

Saturday night, August 24, 2019.

Saturday. 8:24 p.m. 67 degrees. Passing clouds. Breeze from the northeast, 3 mph.. Late evening grocery run. Twilight when I went into the supermarket. Near dark when I came out. Fully night by the time I was halfway home. Summer waning.

File under How the Weather Was.