The other day in western PA we were surprised by a smallish yet chubby black bear that scrambled across a guardrail and zipped across the road in front of us (no photo, sorry) in a mad dash for the woods on the other side (add your own riff on the old chicken-crossed-the-road joke here), but this snow we found in PA? in NY? is more evocative of winter for me. In our part of Atlanta, we see snow on the ground maybe every two or three years, although I guess with global warming that frequency may decrease. On the other hand, during the Little Ice Age, there was more snow across the Southeast, so that DeSoto and his bunch suffered a cold and unpleasant winter in 1539 and 1540 (I think) in southeastern North America. Can you tell I’m thinking about cycling and fluctuations (actually, both in nature/climate, and in societies)?