There's nothing indicating it's going to stop

At the end of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, there's an observation that's been on my mind lately,"That's the problem with the British, their weather." In the context of the book the weather may explain hundreds of years of imperialist impulse and agression. We're in for another wet week here.


A big storm is supposed to arrive Tuesday. We haven't been able to grill for weeks. The local paper ran an article on how to cope with seasonal affective disorder:

... even folks who don't slip into depression every winter are starting to feel weighed down by the nearly nonstop storms -- especially when there's seemingly no end to the rainy days.

"A lot of people are at least paying lip service to this idea that the extended winter weather is having an adverse impact on the way they feel," said Dan Weiner, a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy in Oakland.

It's April, I have an olive tree, and a book on creating mediteranean gardens. I spent yesterday cleaning the basement.


It's tempting to reconcile this bout of weather with our recent drought, though I fear something more insidious may be at work. Or, as a guy from Zimbabwe asked at the Farmers' Market yesterday,"What have you crazy Americans done?"