The Heavens Part

Wow.

Every once in a while nature reminds us how flimsy and unimportant we really are. A few minutes ago, as I stood in my yard, ironically enough talking to a guy about trimming some alders to improve our view, a lightning storm -- dunder und blitzen shazammenin -- of epic proportions began. At first the bolts were far enough away that the thunder took a couple of seconds to arrive; but they lit the dark skies like flashbulbs. We see them here not rarely; but this soon became a bone-shaker and ear-shatterer, an eye blinder not usually of this part of the earth.

As the rain came down harder and the lightning got brighter and closer, we repaired to under the porch, at which point the flashes and claps came with nearly no interval, bright enough to leave my retinas popping like downed wires in a windstorm, the two of us looking at each other with somewhat shattered smiles. Sizzling power, beyond comprehension.

Now, it's pouring. In the time I've been writing this, maybe five minutes, my rain gauge went from 0.0 to 0.83 inches, and my gutters are aswamp, overflowing everywhere.

The rumblings are further away now, the flashes mostly making mere embers of the clouds. But the sky is bleeding profusely, and I'm thinking nothing Barack Obama or Mitt Romney say will change it much.

Well, except for the fact that this sort of weather, and that burning the nation at the moment, has finally been announced -- after years of saying one weather system does not a climate make -- to be related to global warming. From which both guys seem to have backed away; but about which President Obama might try to do something in his second term; whereas The Rominee, while taking money hand over fist from Koch Industries, will pretend he never heard of it.