It looks oddly like Winter out there today, an untypically (for this year) Typical later-February day, the sky a nameless brand of white, with an undecided mix of snow and rain dropping at uneven rates. It's a damned welcome thing too, as the drought here has gotten bad enough that the city is talking about getting drinking water from under JFK airport or thereabouts.

It was strange enough to visit southern California's artificially maintained coastal desert: all those palm trees sprouting up in the world's largest man-made oasis. But it was stranger to come back to an NYC that looked like SoCal in winter -- clear skies, every day temperate, leather-jacket weather, and not a mud puddle in sight. As a city of pedestrian, dry-and-mild should always be our climate of preference, but it's become alienating. And worrisome: one can't help envisioning the dust-bowl effect on Prospect Park after a few more months of this. Not to mention what the F train morning rush is going to smell like if shower rationing becomes necessary.

The lousy economy and so many of our friends jobless; the spectacle of the Bush administration using its popularity to fight all the wrong battles (hey, taxpayers! It's your Superfund cleanup now!); the lingering horror of tomorrow's bomb; and now this endless dessication and the prospect of a brown Spring. Something has to give: we'll settle for some rain and snow. Buckets. Cats and Dogs. Forty days, forty nights, whatever it takes.