[Carl Copeland]

Julie, you always say your revisions make things worse, which is a lie—except maybe in this case:

L1: I find it easier to think of the official as having a single solemn stride, rather than many individual solemn strides, but maybe I’ll get used to it.

L3: “Notes” does sound more official, but I don’t think that’s the idea here.

L14: I was going to say this line is now too congested, but you’ve fixed that by squeezing out “briefly.” I wondered whether Rueda was hinting at falsity when I read the first version, and it’s better that way IMO. If you have to specify either “impermanence” or “pretense,” I think the former theme is more straightforward and more open to the second theme: the hail’s blondness is false partly because it’s impermanent, so the two intertwine. (And I wonder whether artificially blonde hailstones point to bleached-blonde basket bearers!) Anyway, if you keep it as is, I’d still recommend losing “the” in L12. It sounds like a substitution for substitution’s sake.