Sunday, August 23, 2009

"All politics is local"


We've all heard that. I believe it's credited to the late Tip O'Neill.

Out here on the Great Plains all weather is local. In the picture above I am standing under a dark and forbidding storm cloud while the country a mile to the south is enjoying a lovely dusk display of color and sunlight. I've stood out on the prairie and had a fast moving rain storm move past, just a few scant yards away, and been untouched by the rain. Only the smell of hot earth being rained on to bolster the evidence of my eyes. A neighbor will tell me that the night before, while I was enjoying piece and calm and a balmy night, he was being pounded half to death by 2" hailstones followed by rain enough to almost flood his place. Sometimes it makes you feel 'specially exempted,' and sometimes you feel like you're being picked on!

2 comments:

Sanjac said...

I love watching the leading edge of those type of storms roll in. They seem very alive and forbidding. The lightning tends to make me move inside eventually. I can relate to the feeling of being picked on as we have had little rainfall since May and every heavy thunderstorm that moves through seems to split around our house and reform on the otherside. Sometimes the storms lose momentum when they near us and just stall out. My wife is starting to think we are being punished! No human sacrifice will be forthcoming though!

Rio Arriba said...

Yeah, the lightning will sure enough run you inside. But it is pleasurable to stand and watch them, feel the moist breeze, and smell that rain-meets-hot-dirt smell. Kind of puts you at one with the essential universe.