Meteorologists know the North Atlantic Oscillation as a large-scale pattern of climate variability, an arctic mass of pressure rising and falling to drive winter weather with the repercussive mandate of a fulcrum. Those of us laymen unmindful of the cause are familiar with the consequences: when the phenomenon is in a high-pressure negative phase, one of which it now appears to be entering, it delivers to the eastern United States a wintery melange.

Snow will fall, they say, before the week is out.

ON A FINE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: Flurries arrived. I gasped. I giggled. I reveled.

Is there any doubt as to the verity of the Great Seal of Ohio?

Or the arrival of the season? It is rumored — it was yesterday, is not today but may again be tomorrow — that snow will mix with this Thursday's rain.

The sun rose — and I was there.

At a proper height we can observe one sky and one landscape as it conjures artistry without sophistication or pretense, treasure from which there is never surfeit.

Fifteen years young.

Though a yearly regret at summer's end is the gradual approach of winter's sovereign night, the shortening of the day returns sunrise to a reasonable hour.

The leaves are swirling, the rain is cold and the air is brisker by the day. It is only a matter of weeks, now, before the first snow.

These balmy days of Indian Summer are a delightful coda — and the last steps on a precipice. Welcome, Autumn.

I have just returned from a trip to San Diego, California for attendance at my cousin Francis' wedding. Yes, those are real palm trees below the Pacific horizon and no, I had never before seen them in their proper estate.

More to follow.

The divine wishes to speak.

THE ROCK, STRUCK TWICE: Providential origin or not, I decided to push the color later in the day. Must I now hire a lawyer to appeal my debarment from the Promised Land?