i remember saint swithin's day, and the predictions that if it rained that day it would rain for 40 more in succession, and one year it didi!

i used to watch drops wending theit way down my window pane for hours, as a kid.

it was so magical how they joined up...

and the capricious way they'd slow down, then trickle faster...

then 16 years on the wet side of the big island of hawaii, rainbowland...

and one memorably soggy night camping amid the candlenut trees on the slopes of kauai's sleeping giant mountain, the world's wettest spot.

the hawaiians have 200 words for rain, iirc.

yup, rain has been a constant companion and ally much of my life.

monsoon in tamil nadu, i had no idea rain could fall like that!

when i moved to california, with its crisper temps, i immediately noticed how dry the air was, even in santa cruz by the ocean.

guitars ring better, and fingerboards aren't wet when you take the guitar out of its case, or furry even, if you've left it more than a couple of hours!

living on a northfacing hill, i really value dry air, and being a modest collector of instruments, humidity is very definitely NOT my friend.

so i actually prefer snow to rain...it's the surreal mantle of silence that i love the best, i think, and the strange 3d geometry of icicles and tree twigs girded with fairy lace...

but with global warming and water being a big issue in the future, i count every drop that does fall as a pure blessing!

perhaps the 'spin' in the ball terminology is similar to the spin in british politics....perhaps hypocrisy has flown to new depths on the wings of the english language...

ther is a disturbing grain of truth to that snark, or maybe, as always, it could be my image-in-nation.

orwell certainly gives me the impression he felt that way, but perhaps he didn't know any other languages, i dunno...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty