The Weather Channel

I'm lucky. Aside from the usuals that make me more grateful than you can imagine - a growing healthiness and sacrificing myself for my research by living in New York and being paid to read and write there -, I have the chance, when I leave my building every morning, to step out, and get my very own weather channel report: clear, blue day, the Empire State Building is shinny and proud; rainy day, no ESB; tricky skies sure to drench you no matter when you step outside, the ESB spire is almost ghostlike in the clouds.

From my vantage point in the Library, I watched the building appearing and disappearing in the clouds. The sidewalks were a cemetery of sacrificed umbrellas.