"The rain is raining all around, it falls on field and tree, it rains on the umbrellas here and on the ships at sea." And it is raining. My front door was open, airing out the house that had been shut for a month, the big trees in the yard filling the screen with deep shades of rich green. Then I glanced up to see steady stripes of rain falling straight to the ground. As Thoreau wrote, "The scattered drops are falling fast and thin," so quietly I almost missed them. Now it's coming more heavily, accompanied by occasional thunder. It is the perfect summer downpour. Once it's finished the humidity will probably be even higher, but right now I don't care. I love rain.
I love a late summer shower, like the one that even now is silently polishing leaves and grass to a lighter green. Birds love them, too. They sing through the bits of thunder and momentary downpours. I expect they love the rain even more than I do. To them it means fresh water and worms crawling out of the soggy soil, offering themselves as a tasty banquet on the grass and driveway. Frogs love the rain. The fat one who lives under one side of my little garden pond croaks his appreciation of the fresh water flowing into his pool, the one he shares with some small lilies and a brass frog. The frog is a fancy of mine. It has a little valve in it's mouth that water is supposed to flow out of, and a slightly obscene one on the other end that the kids tease me about. I just nestle him into a flower and say no more. It's not his fault he was created that way. He's meant to spit water, of course, but I chose him for his size and shape. I don't know what my real frog considers him -- some kind of weirdo neighbor perhaps. The kind best ignored. I do know that they sit out during rain showers, apparently enjoying themselves. Rain is so wonderful, who doesn't love it?
I don't. I hate the rain, especially the long drawn out ones in October and November. They fall day after day, graying out the sun, making us drive with our wipers on perpetual swish-swish. They soak the ground, saturating it and clashing with the already high water table, a battle of two unalterable forces. Every day there is more. It makes permanent puddles on our lawns, rivers in our driveways, and turns the deep drainage gully by the street into a canal. The heavy clay that masquerades as soil in my yard becomes a slippery, sloppy goo that permanently stains my sneakers and socks. My porch fills up with pots of perennials, tiny trees desperate to get into ground and start growing, and my beloved shrubs. Digging and planting are impossible. Seeds will wash away, and the dirt can't be moved or even walked on, as that turns the clay into an adobe-like brick. So I watch the rain and complain. Every spring and every fall it torments us with it's capriciousness. I've never read a poem in which a gardener laments the rain, rails about the unfairness of its timing, curses the way it willfully keeps him from his planting and tending. No poet appears to have tackled the subject. Perhaps thats because gardeners are too busy to write poetry; they're all inside planning the minute details of next year's vegetable gardens or their new, expensive irrigation systems. As for poets, their gardens probably die in the first heatwave. Who can remember to tend the herbs when one is tending the muse instead?
Yes, I definitely hate the rain. Longfellow knows what I feel. "The day is cold, and dark, and dreary, it rains, and the wind is never weary... Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary." Farmers hate the rain, too, rather like gardeners. Most of the year they pray for it but when fall arrives, with the approaching harvests ripening, they swear at weather forecasters who even dare say 'precipitation'. Every tiny cloud is examined and discussed in minutest detail. The space shuttle could be cleared for take-off, but crops at harvest time are much more demanding. A bit of rain can spoil a year's hard work. Too many ruined crops and another family loses their land. Technological advances aside, farmers are still at the mercy of weather. But let's not forget about the biggest haters of rain -- children. One of the first chants they learn pleads "Rain, rain, go away." How they wish it would! Enough to spend an entire day by the window, imploring endlessly.
Then again, I do love the rain. "I thought I had forgotten, but it all came back again to-night with the first ... thunder in a rush of rain." (Spring Rain by Sara Teasdale.) I hope I'm never so far gone that I grouse about summertime rain. Here in the SE it can make a day livable. The low gray clouds stop the burning sun. Rain drives temperatures down. Even a few extra degrees of coolness are appreciated, especially at night, when I stand on my back deck watching the storm clouds forced in by northwest winds. The a/c won't have to be turned down quite so far tonight, and the house may be a little cooler in the morning when I get up. It's no secret that farmers love rain. It saves them from having to irrigate. It fills wells, replenishes aquifers and rinses the grit from their skin as they ride their tractors. Everyone knows children love the rain, too, don't they? They open their mouths to it, jump in its puddles, fling mud at each other, and become drenched to their bones. I like to do those things, too. Even rain gear is fun to wear, as A. A. Milne knows. "John had Great Big Waterproof Boots on; John had a Great Big Waterproof Hat." The name of the poem? Happiness. It's there right now -- outside my door waiting for me. A lovely August rain, and something even better -- happiness. Who knew?
Read Well, Friend
(Rain, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Summer Rain by Thoreau; A Rainy Day by Longfellow.)
8/1/09
7/28/09
Taking a Second Look at Poetry
People don't like poetry. Not only don't they read it, they make fun of those who do; shaking their heads at them in a pitying sort of way, as if poetry lovers were slightly off-balanced. I don't judge them. After all, I don't get the appeal of muscular guys tossing each other around in carefully choreographed moves while pretending it's all real. I have, at least, tried watching such shows in an effort to understand. I wish the poetry haters and ignorers and disparagers would do the same.
I think most of the problem is in the way poetry is introduced to us. People often meet their first grown-up poems in school, where they're faced with titles like Thanatopsis or Il Penseroso. That's enough to put anyone off. If they do get past the title they may find such welcoming first lines as "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!" and "Hence, vain deluding Joys." I kid you not, we read all of these in my rural high school. And while I appreciate, even love them now, (except for Il Penseroso; it's what one might call a downer), I struggled through them back then. Because of these bad experiences, I have my own ideas of how to approach the subject. It goes beyond choosing poems that fit one's reading and comprehension level. Why not introduce poetry as mini-stories, a sort of text message on any topic imaginable?
If you crave adventure filled with unusual places and people, how about a beginning like this -- "I met a traveler from an antique land, who said; Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert." Interested? You won't find it in National Geographic. Try Ozymandias by P. B. Shelley, instead. It's pretty short, so for a slightly longer tale I suggest this opening, "'Courage!' he said, and pointed toward the land, 'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.'" (The Lotus-Eaters, Tennyson.) At the very least it might hold you until the next Patrick O'Brian novel comes out. Finally, what armchair traveler could resist learning more about Xanadu, where "Kubla Khan (did) a stately pleasure-dome decree"? Not to mention the sacred river Alph running through "canyons measureless to man down to a sunless sea." (Kubla Khan, Coleridge)
Probably everyone associates poems with love. Adolescents sigh over them, quote them, sometimes even write them. When we grow up many of us read romances, go to romantic movies, and long for long-stemmed roses and flowery words. Will "O my love is like a red red rose, that's newly sprung in June;" do? In a different vein, even I might be tempted by a book that opens "Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove..." Be warned, it's definitely not PG, and the movie version could turn out quite racy. (Robert Burns and Christopher Marlowe, respectively.)
Bookstore sell a lot of mysteries. I know I have shelves full of my favorites, and I'm not alone. For many, the discovery of a new book is cause for celebration -- and maybe an all night read-a-thon. Fortunately poetry isn't lacking here. A favorite from my childhood catches attention with these opening lines; "'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler, knocking on the moonlit door." Who is this man referred to only as the Traveler? Why is he knocking on a stranger's door in the middle of the night? Is there anyone there, and if so who, or worse yet, what? I still feel a creepy sense of foreboding when I read those lines. They're not by Lovecraft, King, or Holmes, but Walter de la Mare. It's called The Listener. Don't miss it. For more mysterious goings on try ""He disappeared in the dead of winter;" or "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind." Go ahead and take a chance -- read a poem and have an adventure.
(W. H. Auden, then Francis Thompson.)
Poetry debates philosophy and ideas like reality and free will; it frequently muses on the meaning of life, not always at first glance. Poems can be probed forever and never quite comprehended, or they may mean absolutely nothing. They sing, warn, complain, chide, and lift our spirits. They also tell stories. Stories about people. Stories that begin like this; "That's my last duchess on the wall, looking as if she were still alive." (Robert Browning's Last Duchess.) "He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him," Robert Frost tells us in Home
Burial. And Walt Whitman tempts the reader with a story where, "on the beach at night, stands a child with her father, watching the east," in his piece of the same name. Trust me, there really is a wealth of wonderful poetry out there waiting to be discovered. Maybe next time "When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles" you'll consider turning off the TV, reclaiming your favorite chair from the cat, and curling up with a good book. Of Poetry, of course.
Read Well, Friend
(In the first paragraph the poems are by John Milton, W. C Bryant, Byron's Sonnet on Chillion, and Il Penseroso again. Final quote from Love Among the Ruins by Robert Browning.)
I think most of the problem is in the way poetry is introduced to us. People often meet their first grown-up poems in school, where they're faced with titles like Thanatopsis or Il Penseroso. That's enough to put anyone off. If they do get past the title they may find such welcoming first lines as "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!" and "Hence, vain deluding Joys." I kid you not, we read all of these in my rural high school. And while I appreciate, even love them now, (except for Il Penseroso; it's what one might call a downer), I struggled through them back then. Because of these bad experiences, I have my own ideas of how to approach the subject. It goes beyond choosing poems that fit one's reading and comprehension level. Why not introduce poetry as mini-stories, a sort of text message on any topic imaginable?
If you crave adventure filled with unusual places and people, how about a beginning like this -- "I met a traveler from an antique land, who said; Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert." Interested? You won't find it in National Geographic. Try Ozymandias by P. B. Shelley, instead. It's pretty short, so for a slightly longer tale I suggest this opening, "'Courage!' he said, and pointed toward the land, 'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.'" (The Lotus-Eaters, Tennyson.) At the very least it might hold you until the next Patrick O'Brian novel comes out. Finally, what armchair traveler could resist learning more about Xanadu, where "Kubla Khan (did) a stately pleasure-dome decree"? Not to mention the sacred river Alph running through "canyons measureless to man down to a sunless sea." (Kubla Khan, Coleridge)
Probably everyone associates poems with love. Adolescents sigh over them, quote them, sometimes even write them. When we grow up many of us read romances, go to romantic movies, and long for long-stemmed roses and flowery words. Will "O my love is like a red red rose, that's newly sprung in June;" do? In a different vein, even I might be tempted by a book that opens "Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove..." Be warned, it's definitely not PG, and the movie version could turn out quite racy. (Robert Burns and Christopher Marlowe, respectively.)
Bookstore sell a lot of mysteries. I know I have shelves full of my favorites, and I'm not alone. For many, the discovery of a new book is cause for celebration -- and maybe an all night read-a-thon. Fortunately poetry isn't lacking here. A favorite from my childhood catches attention with these opening lines; "'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler, knocking on the moonlit door." Who is this man referred to only as the Traveler? Why is he knocking on a stranger's door in the middle of the night? Is there anyone there, and if so who, or worse yet, what? I still feel a creepy sense of foreboding when I read those lines. They're not by Lovecraft, King, or Holmes, but Walter de la Mare. It's called The Listener. Don't miss it. For more mysterious goings on try ""He disappeared in the dead of winter;" or "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind." Go ahead and take a chance -- read a poem and have an adventure.
(W. H. Auden, then Francis Thompson.)
Poetry debates philosophy and ideas like reality and free will; it frequently muses on the meaning of life, not always at first glance. Poems can be probed forever and never quite comprehended, or they may mean absolutely nothing. They sing, warn, complain, chide, and lift our spirits. They also tell stories. Stories about people. Stories that begin like this; "That's my last duchess on the wall, looking as if she were still alive." (Robert Browning's Last Duchess.) "He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him," Robert Frost tells us in Home
Burial. And Walt Whitman tempts the reader with a story where, "on the beach at night, stands a child with her father, watching the east," in his piece of the same name. Trust me, there really is a wealth of wonderful poetry out there waiting to be discovered. Maybe next time "When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles" you'll consider turning off the TV, reclaiming your favorite chair from the cat, and curling up with a good book. Of Poetry, of course.
Read Well, Friend
(In the first paragraph the poems are by John Milton, W. C Bryant, Byron's Sonnet on Chillion, and Il Penseroso again. Final quote from Love Among the Ruins by Robert Browning.)
7/24/09
Home Comforts
I'm not much of a housekeeper. If I qualify as a 'yo-yo' dieter, (and I do), I should be the mascot of the Yo-Yo Housekeeping Club. So feel free to be as shocked as my Mother would to know I have a book about housekeeping on my shelf. A very large, 884 page book, called Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. While I could reasonably be expected to but a book on art, and occasionally science, a book subtitled The Art and Science of Keeping House isn't my usual fare. It's not your usual cleaning-up book, either. In some ways a cross between Alexandra Stoddard and the instruction manual that came with your washing machine, it's also much more. (The fact that I long ago lost the manual from my washing machine was one of the reasons I bought it. Being on sale was another.) Thus several years ago I found myself the proud owner of a book with 72 chapters on cleaning my house. In the spirit of sharing the wealth I bought one for each of my kids, too.
Doing exactly what this type of book discourages, I started reading straight through from page vii to the end. The second chapter looked promising. Easing Into a Routine is just my style. Save time! Shorten housekeeping! Keep lists! I was primed. (I love lists, having at one time kept a master list of my lists.) I read on. Daily schedules sure, but weekly, monthly, semiannually and annually? This was more than I'd bargained for. Weekly laundering chores followed. It seemed that throwing towels and sheets in once a week, and washing my clothes when I ran out of clean underwear, just wasn't the thing. Not my idea of easing in, but it wouldn't stop me. I read on.
I breezed through the section on food and kitchens. My grandmothers and mother may not have spent a lot time instructing me on the finer points of dusting, but thanks to them I know my way around a kitchen, and food. If Mendelson ever adds a chapter on cooking and baking, I'm her woman. I'll even clean up after myself. I was fascinated by the idea of keeping a separate rag bag for each of the several types and sizes of rags I should have. I learned how to sweep the floor with a broom -- it seems I have been doing that correctly. However, I didn't realize there are people who go over their floors on their hands and knees with a dust cloth after vacuuming, just to be sure. It shouldn't have surprised me, having once known two women who weekly scrubbed their baseboards with a toothbrush. While each raising several small children to boot. I don't know where they are now, but I'll wager they still have the most sparkling baseboards in their neighborhoods. Or arthritic knees -- take your pick.
It's not fair, though, to dismiss Home Comforts as another of those self-improvement books that invariably leave you feeling more out of control and depressed than before. In fact, after a quick glance, both of my kids insisted on being given their copies immediately. I'd been thinking about keeping the books until they went to college or got married. But, as one of them pointed out, by that time I probably wouldn't be able to find them. What caught the kids' interest was the way almost arcane bits of information, like caring for daguerreotypes and tintypes, co-existed with detailed explanations on fiber composition, care and cleaning.Very detailed information. The section on removing stains is more complete than anything my washing machine manufacturer ever dreamed of.
The author made her book more than a compendium of tips on folding fitted sheets and maintaining your drains, or even calculating the efficiency of light bulbs. In the name of cleaning science she spoke to many industry insiders and experts at obscure governmental departments. (I like to imagine that in the process she made some usually ignored people people very happy.) The result of of her zealous research is a book even the most skeptical can trust. If a co-worker spills coffee on her blouse and reaches for the hand cleanser, you can tell her that the tannins in coffee could be permanently set by the soap, and, by the way, the hair spray she keeps in her purse isn't a good cleaner for ball point pen marks. The alcohol may get the mark out, but the guns and lacquers left behind can be just as hard to remove. This is not an old wives' tale. You learned it from an expert.
As for myself, I've decided this book has earned it's place on the bookshelf, taking up the last three precious inches of space between Granddad's copy of Edger Guest, (It takes a heap o' living to make a house a home."), and the end of the shelf. It's a fitting place, I think. After all, Home Comforts does contain an entire chapter on taking care of books. A short chapter it may be, running not much more than four pages including illustrations. But it is an entire chapter, with enough information to make my second grade teacher and my husband happy. My teacher, because of the detailed instructions on opening a book for the first time. Lay the book open, keeping the pages upright. Then carefully open the pages a few at a time, alternating from front to back. One never opens a new book from the center. Miss Ethredge knew that. My husband would have appreciated the general air of reverence shown here, and the wisdom imparted in the opening sentence, "The best way to preserve a book is to read it." But then he didn't need anyone to tell him that. Neither do you.
Read Well, Friend
Doing exactly what this type of book discourages, I started reading straight through from page vii to the end. The second chapter looked promising. Easing Into a Routine is just my style. Save time! Shorten housekeeping! Keep lists! I was primed. (I love lists, having at one time kept a master list of my lists.) I read on. Daily schedules sure, but weekly, monthly, semiannually and annually? This was more than I'd bargained for. Weekly laundering chores followed. It seemed that throwing towels and sheets in once a week, and washing my clothes when I ran out of clean underwear, just wasn't the thing. Not my idea of easing in, but it wouldn't stop me. I read on.
I breezed through the section on food and kitchens. My grandmothers and mother may not have spent a lot time instructing me on the finer points of dusting, but thanks to them I know my way around a kitchen, and food. If Mendelson ever adds a chapter on cooking and baking, I'm her woman. I'll even clean up after myself. I was fascinated by the idea of keeping a separate rag bag for each of the several types and sizes of rags I should have. I learned how to sweep the floor with a broom -- it seems I have been doing that correctly. However, I didn't realize there are people who go over their floors on their hands and knees with a dust cloth after vacuuming, just to be sure. It shouldn't have surprised me, having once known two women who weekly scrubbed their baseboards with a toothbrush. While each raising several small children to boot. I don't know where they are now, but I'll wager they still have the most sparkling baseboards in their neighborhoods. Or arthritic knees -- take your pick.
It's not fair, though, to dismiss Home Comforts as another of those self-improvement books that invariably leave you feeling more out of control and depressed than before. In fact, after a quick glance, both of my kids insisted on being given their copies immediately. I'd been thinking about keeping the books until they went to college or got married. But, as one of them pointed out, by that time I probably wouldn't be able to find them. What caught the kids' interest was the way almost arcane bits of information, like caring for daguerreotypes and tintypes, co-existed with detailed explanations on fiber composition, care and cleaning.Very detailed information. The section on removing stains is more complete than anything my washing machine manufacturer ever dreamed of.
The author made her book more than a compendium of tips on folding fitted sheets and maintaining your drains, or even calculating the efficiency of light bulbs. In the name of cleaning science she spoke to many industry insiders and experts at obscure governmental departments. (I like to imagine that in the process she made some usually ignored people people very happy.) The result of of her zealous research is a book even the most skeptical can trust. If a co-worker spills coffee on her blouse and reaches for the hand cleanser, you can tell her that the tannins in coffee could be permanently set by the soap, and, by the way, the hair spray she keeps in her purse isn't a good cleaner for ball point pen marks. The alcohol may get the mark out, but the guns and lacquers left behind can be just as hard to remove. This is not an old wives' tale. You learned it from an expert.
As for myself, I've decided this book has earned it's place on the bookshelf, taking up the last three precious inches of space between Granddad's copy of Edger Guest, (It takes a heap o' living to make a house a home."), and the end of the shelf. It's a fitting place, I think. After all, Home Comforts does contain an entire chapter on taking care of books. A short chapter it may be, running not much more than four pages including illustrations. But it is an entire chapter, with enough information to make my second grade teacher and my husband happy. My teacher, because of the detailed instructions on opening a book for the first time. Lay the book open, keeping the pages upright. Then carefully open the pages a few at a time, alternating from front to back. One never opens a new book from the center. Miss Ethredge knew that. My husband would have appreciated the general air of reverence shown here, and the wisdom imparted in the opening sentence, "The best way to preserve a book is to read it." But then he didn't need anyone to tell him that. Neither do you.
Read Well, Friend
7/21/09
Written on the Wind
"On the planet the winds are blowing: ... The pampero blows, and the tramontane and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger, feel the now." ( Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Dillard.) I can't read a passage like this without wanting to fly off to a strange place, lift up my arms to heaven and feel the sirocco, the polar easterlies, the chinook she writes about. So many names for nothing more than the easily explained movement of air over the surface of our world. Each name stands for a different experience, a unique place, direction and power. I want to know them all.
The Chinook, for example. I always thought I would have to go to Alaska to feel it. Now I discover that it's any warm wind blowing East from the Rocky Mountains. I grew up a few hundred miles east of those mountains. Just think, Eskimos, black bears, salmon, and me -- all enjoying a chinook! Then there's the exotic sounding tramontane. I confess I was disappointed to learn that one definition says it's any wind blowing from the opposite side of the speaker; the classic meaning is simply a north wind. A bit of a let down, really. Still, that's two down and a lot more to go.
The sirocco. Ahhh, that's definitely exotic. Desert, sheiks, and caravans with camels, right? Sorry, but no. Technically, any dust or sand storm qualifies, though I refuse to accept that. I've been in enough of those to know there's nothing exotic about them. You just swallow a lot of dirt and it gets up your nose; grit fills your eyes and your lids are plastered shut. No, thanks. As far as I'm concerned just any old sandstorm doesn't count. I insist on going through mine on a camel in the desert of Morocco. (My parents, though, would have been tickled to know they hadn't just lived through the Dust Bowl, but a whole bunch of siroccos. Sounds like a lot more fun.)
Some winds are pretty specific. A sweater wind, for instance, can melt up to two feet of snow in a day. Of course that presumes that you have at least two feet of snow in the first place. Yet another good reason for me to leave Tennessee and return to Colorado. I don't think much of my chances of getting a sweater wind otherwise. In that vein, it's a good thing I'm determined to visit Greece some day, for only there can I stand in both the gregate, which blows NE from Greece, and the etesian, his contrary twin going NW. The pampero, as I should have guessed, blows in Argentina and Uruguay. The counterpart to our north wind, it brings cold fronts in from the S or SW. While you're in the area, don't miss the Boro. You will find the tribe in NE India. Presumably, you can also pick up the wind there as it's passing from Europe to Turkey.
There are a lot more winds out there, as you might have guessed. But before I blow off for now, (sorry, couldn't resist), I must mention three more. One is called the levanter, which I initially confused with a catalog with a similar name where my husband liked to drool over, and occasionally purchase, very expensive pens. Poor levanter, it's really done nothing to offend me, spending it's time puffing along from the western Mediterranean across the Straits of Gibraltar. In the same way I always despised the mistral, which I somehow thought a feeble spring wind in France, greatly enamored of by bodice-ripper romance writers. (They use it a lot in the titles. Otherwise, how would I know?) In reality the mistral is a cold, dry, often violent wind that scours the Rhone Valley in winter and early spring. Now that's more my type. Finally, for the wind most likely to disappoint, I give you chocolatero, which blows sand around in the Gulf. That's it, no tiny little Reese's cups or dark chocolate Dove squares, just sand. How sad.
I just might become a collector of winds -- by definition and experience. I've been in plenty of them; they weren't exactly lacking in my childhood in NE Colorado. Since then they've blown on me with near hurricane strength in Florida, as near-miss typhoons in Japan, and very real tornadoes in Tennessee and Nebraska. I'm not unique. There can't possibly be anyone in this world who doesn't know how wind feels, except the children who have to live in those plastic bubbles and may never feel air moving tenderly across their cheeks or struggle to keep their balance as it tries to send them to their knees. The rest of us, the vast majority of us, know it in some form, by some name. Whether suhaili, garigliano, turnagain, or chergui, bayamo or Cockeyed Bob, it blows on us all. You could even say all of us have inherited the wind. We might as well enjoy it.
Read Well, Friend
The Chinook, for example. I always thought I would have to go to Alaska to feel it. Now I discover that it's any warm wind blowing East from the Rocky Mountains. I grew up a few hundred miles east of those mountains. Just think, Eskimos, black bears, salmon, and me -- all enjoying a chinook! Then there's the exotic sounding tramontane. I confess I was disappointed to learn that one definition says it's any wind blowing from the opposite side of the speaker; the classic meaning is simply a north wind. A bit of a let down, really. Still, that's two down and a lot more to go.
The sirocco. Ahhh, that's definitely exotic. Desert, sheiks, and caravans with camels, right? Sorry, but no. Technically, any dust or sand storm qualifies, though I refuse to accept that. I've been in enough of those to know there's nothing exotic about them. You just swallow a lot of dirt and it gets up your nose; grit fills your eyes and your lids are plastered shut. No, thanks. As far as I'm concerned just any old sandstorm doesn't count. I insist on going through mine on a camel in the desert of Morocco. (My parents, though, would have been tickled to know they hadn't just lived through the Dust Bowl, but a whole bunch of siroccos. Sounds like a lot more fun.)
Some winds are pretty specific. A sweater wind, for instance, can melt up to two feet of snow in a day. Of course that presumes that you have at least two feet of snow in the first place. Yet another good reason for me to leave Tennessee and return to Colorado. I don't think much of my chances of getting a sweater wind otherwise. In that vein, it's a good thing I'm determined to visit Greece some day, for only there can I stand in both the gregate, which blows NE from Greece, and the etesian, his contrary twin going NW. The pampero, as I should have guessed, blows in Argentina and Uruguay. The counterpart to our north wind, it brings cold fronts in from the S or SW. While you're in the area, don't miss the Boro. You will find the tribe in NE India. Presumably, you can also pick up the wind there as it's passing from Europe to Turkey.
There are a lot more winds out there, as you might have guessed. But before I blow off for now, (sorry, couldn't resist), I must mention three more. One is called the levanter, which I initially confused with a catalog with a similar name where my husband liked to drool over, and occasionally purchase, very expensive pens. Poor levanter, it's really done nothing to offend me, spending it's time puffing along from the western Mediterranean across the Straits of Gibraltar. In the same way I always despised the mistral, which I somehow thought a feeble spring wind in France, greatly enamored of by bodice-ripper romance writers. (They use it a lot in the titles. Otherwise, how would I know?) In reality the mistral is a cold, dry, often violent wind that scours the Rhone Valley in winter and early spring. Now that's more my type. Finally, for the wind most likely to disappoint, I give you chocolatero, which blows sand around in the Gulf. That's it, no tiny little Reese's cups or dark chocolate Dove squares, just sand. How sad.
I just might become a collector of winds -- by definition and experience. I've been in plenty of them; they weren't exactly lacking in my childhood in NE Colorado. Since then they've blown on me with near hurricane strength in Florida, as near-miss typhoons in Japan, and very real tornadoes in Tennessee and Nebraska. I'm not unique. There can't possibly be anyone in this world who doesn't know how wind feels, except the children who have to live in those plastic bubbles and may never feel air moving tenderly across their cheeks or struggle to keep their balance as it tries to send them to their knees. The rest of us, the vast majority of us, know it in some form, by some name. Whether suhaili, garigliano, turnagain, or chergui, bayamo or Cockeyed Bob, it blows on us all. You could even say all of us have inherited the wind. We might as well enjoy it.
Read Well, Friend
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