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.