Late yesterday evening Marty and I came in from dinner and errands, a Friday night tradition at our house. It's getting dark earlier and earlier now, and as we got out of the car, we looked up into the sky. Although we live very close to New Haven, the city lights interfere much less with our view of the stars than you might expect. Friday had been a cloudy day, but by last night it had cleared and the stars were vivid against the black sky.

Among all the stars were the tiny flashing lights of a jet plane, moving slowly across the sky, way overhead. It was the first plane I'd seen in the sky since Monday.