DAY 14: Mackerel Sky

BETHESDA, MD | March 23, 2010 - Out for a run, early and cold under a mackerel sky, alongside all the black and silver cars making the morning commute down Massachusetts Ave.

Mackerel sky: a sky my mum's mum Muriel used to know. Clouds small and flat, closely packed in sheets of ovals, like flanks of the fish. Old sayings mention it, saying, "Mackeral in the sky, three days dry."

Muriel has been dead for years now. Strong Scottish woman from Nova Scotia, a nurse, divorced her husband before people did that with so much regularity. My dad mentioned it the other day, her phrase. I'd never known, all these years, that she read clouds, too, from under 1940s custom wide-brimmed hats.


Mackerel sky. Clear weather coming after the deluge of yesterday.

Will head to Mt. Vernon today, wind in yellow truck along George Washington Memorial Parkway, along the west banks of the Potomac.