Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Weather is What the Gods are Doing
New to Minnesota, my Israeli friend threw up her hands in exasperation.
“Augh!” she groaned. “Doesn't anyone around here ever talk about anything but the weather?”
Well, this is the Midwest. We have lots of weather here and we talk about it a lot. We're proud of our weather, and find it intrinsically interesting. Hell, we have weather here that can kill you. That's pretty interesting.
For pagans, of course, there's added incentive. Earth, Sun, Storm, the Winds: what we call “weather” is what the gods are doing.
What's more interesting than that?
I explained this as well as I could in my rudimentary Hebrew. Hebrew is a language from a meteorologically impoverished part of the world where, for most of the year, there basically is no weather. As a result, the language just hasn't developed the necessary vocabulary with which to hold a proper conversation on the topic.
Several years later, when I studied in the Middle East, I often had occasion to throw up my hands myself.
“Augh!” I groaned. “Doesn't anyone around here ever talk about anything but politics?”
Ye gods. Give me weather any day of the year.
Comments
-
Saturday, 06 February 2016
We must be related, Anthony. The family joke is; what do we talk about at lunch?
What we'll be having for dinner, of course. -
Saturday, 06 February 2016Mom's family is from Kansas. The family surnames I'm sure of are Horkman, DuPoe, and Klotz.
-
Please login first in order for you to submit comments
Time was when my brother-in-law Marty complained that my parents and I talked about food all the time. In more recent years he decided that it's better to listen to us talk about food than listen to his parents talk about their medication.