The question is if — not when — schools will welcome back students. And the question also is how teachers and administrators are preparing.

There have been a lot of strange nights around the Fourth of July at our place. This year might turn out to be one of the strangest.

On this, the first day of summer, I thought it would be fit to fetch the snow shovel from its place beside the front door and take it to the shed out back. “I guess we won’t be needing this for a while,” I said to Mary, before recalling that given the winter that wasn’t, we hadn’t needed it at all.