12 September—Today’s post will be a bit late. Like by a day or three.

Just as I was finishing this morning’s essay—animadversions on sidewalk dining—my pretty reliable eight-year-old desktop computer dropped dead. Went black, no power to anything. Not the CMOS battery. Probably the transformer. We’ll see.

Meantime, it’s Sunday anyway. So I’ll take it easy, keeping calm and carrying on. Although typing on my laptop computer isn’t easy, I’ll try to come up with something for tomorrow that won’t embarrass me . . .