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The temperature tonight is descending into the thirties. (Single digits, centigrade, for those of you who measure things that way.) After having fretted for weeks about the unusually warm winter we’ve enjoyed so far, this evening I feel the need to fret about the cold.

Nights like this I think back fondly on the ten years I lived in what is collectively referred to as South Florida: a few years in Hollywood, then a few more years in Fort Lauderdale. In that context, a cold winter meant wearing socks — and there, of course, I fretted about the absence of a traditional cycle of seasons.

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