I wake up unusually early, and unusually alert. All senses are wary, and I am waiting for something, for anything to happen. The city is all around me, humming its early morning song.

I am staying uptown in Atlanta, at my friend Paul’s flat in Buckhead, in the city to speak speaking of standards, and surfaces, and transacted energy. It is not really any noisier than home. There is no river roaring in the background. There is no early morning siren of an ambulance coming north from Scotland County to the teaching hospital in town. It is really much quieter than Bynum in summer when the cicadas and katydids are fiddling their mating tunes into the hot humid night.

No one was sitting in my row on the small three-seat per row plane I left Boston in and I slid over to the windows while keeping my aisle seat. I began typing my thoughts leaving the member meeting of FIATECH, gloomy musings about the day.

We headed out to sea from Logan airport before turning south, as the high-rises along the harbor glittered into light against an orange sunset. The low-lying clouds in the distance made a lilac backdrop to the twinkling lights in the multi-level parking deck...