Almost Certain.

Forecasts from all corners. JBW, on percentages and probabilities: 80% means it's going to rain. I'll take him at his word. Back in grad school, he and I used to stand on the street two hours before any storm of any kind was anywhere nearby and look out west and debate the sky, the wind, other omens. He was usually right. He's got some kind of a sailing background — I think he was in the Spanish Armada, or rode the crow's nest on the Santa Maria — and so it matters more that he be right, or know how to be. My background is just of other fights— with my dad, standing up on the hill at 20 Brandon Ridge, looking out across the street at sure storms rolling in, trying decide if we were going to be struck by lightning. We survived.

Something sweet's on the wind out there. Honeysuckle, maybe, or the wild roses climbing over the back fence.

This morning at the Harris Teeter there was a small girl, seven years old or so, pushing one of those Future Shopper half-scale carts, cookie crumbs all over her face, hair in a failing braid. Two things in her cart: (1) this week's Harris Teeter circular, prices-per-pound for ground chuck and the like blaring out in yellow, and (2) a tube of Preparation H. She was prepared for any kind of deal the world was getting ready to offer her.

Pancakes. Coffee. The Sunday Times. Bill Evans on the hi-fi. Wrens thinking about building this year's nest in the mailbox. The beagles, god love them, are somehow not barking. And if they do start barking, there's always this.