breezeless

Treeless, breezeless tracts of hot concrete and pavement within cities have become known as urban heat islands.

Re-reading “Goodbye to All That” today — in the era of online, shortform oversharing — it’s striking to a contemporary reader how those 1967 sentences trail on and curl over themselves, like smoke lifting off a cigarette in a breezeless room.

“We were in a venue used for high school football games, and a banner hung breezeless in the air, celebrating a championship from twenty years ago,” notes the narrator of “Fairground.”

Hotter weather can increase demand for electricity while the supply from a grid that relies too much on solar panels and wind turbines can become erratic, producing less power on cloudy and breezeless days.

The air was cold, breezeless, and stars sparkled through moss and waited for a bright half-risen moon to climb higher in the sky.