I’ll be away from keyboard and Internet until Labor Day (Sept. 1 for you non-U.S. readers) weekend as my family and I head for the North Woods. Enjoy the remaining days of your summer, and please do come back in September. I will.

[Sun Aug 31: The above message was supposed to have been posted last Saturday with the aid of Blogger’s postdating feature. Because I was already away at that time, it never happened, because it turns out that postdated items do not get published until the next manual publish occurs, of which there were none until I noticed the problem today. Thank you to those concerned readers who, seeing no posts since the 22nd and no explanation, wrote to ask if everything was all right with me. It was, emphatically! — FmH]