Silver Birds, Grey Skies

Artist Kent Ullberg's iconic whooping cranes looked so fetching the other day, I had to stop for a picture even though I've featured this artwork here on the blog many times before (here, for instance). Behind it sits the Cascade Park Apartments, looking very spiffy in summer. Do you notice how grey and horrible the sky looks? Multiple forest fires out of state and in Canada have been casting a smoky pall over a huge swath of the United States lately, and it's been sitting over Colorado Springs and Denver for the last three or four days. The situation in Denver was so bad yesterday, I heard on the news that it was literally the worst air quality in the entire world. And we are just south of Denver, so you can imagine how bad it's been here, too. Unfortunately when this happens, it has a very undesirable effect: my right eye will swell up and weep nonstop, and it feels like I have grit stuck in my eye that won't budge. It's pretty awful. For two and a half days, all I could do was keep dumping Visine into one or both eyes, although it didn't much help. Thank goodness the cloak of gloom finally (mostly) shifted away from us late this afternoon.