The other night was a Santa Ana Winds night. Southern Californians know what this means. The hot, dry winds come raging down from the high desert, through the San Bernardino mountain passes. They carry dust and debris and the sage-scented shrapnel of the chaparral. They fuel fires and defrock the palms. They howl with glee as they rattle windows and send trash cans tumbling. They tip over semis and send Jacaranda purple blossoms everywhere.

The Internet makes it easy to be alert to everything that's going on in the world, to know what all the important people are saying; but I think we must remember that we can get all that and more in the smallest of things, well observed—even in a grain of sand, William Blake might say.