Wright State University’s faculty union is preparing for a campus-wide strike next week. The strike by more than 500 union members is set to begin Tuesday. And Wright State students -- many of whom just returned last week for the spring semester -- are concerned about how the strike could affect them.

By this point in January, enough small changes have accumulated, in spite of the severe weather, to move the season into Late Winter, the anteroom to Early Spring, growing the birdsong that will fill the mornings of March, rousing small mammals to courtship. Now comes the close of windfall seding. The red honeysuckle berries have long ago fallen or been taken by birds. The orange fruit of the evergreen winterberry has completed its planting. Hawthorn berries give way. Overwintering robins eat...