RAIN LOVE

Here it is, raining beautiful rain in Los Angeles on November 27, 2004, two days after Thanksgiving (I can’t wait for the 11:00 news and all the breathless and panicked “STORMWATCH 2004” reports). The unseasonably hot fall that we’ve come to expect in this city never really materialized this year—it has actually felt like autumn and, dare I say, winter around here lately. And as I sit this afternoon enjoying the sound of the rainfall and feeling the chill in the air with my family about me, I’m reminded of one of my favorite essays about the rain. It was written by Lauren Kessler, director of the literary nonfiction program at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of Oregon Quarterly, the university alumni magazine. Since it so beautifully encapsulates my experience with the weather in Eugene, and my fondness for the wet stuff—I long for it these days--I felt like sharing it whole cloth rather than taking the time to fumble about with my own less eloquent thoughts. So if you've an appreciation for the glories of skies that seem low enough to touch and "the peaceful tedium of long, wet days that (drive) you not just inside the house but inside yourself," please hop right on over to her site and experience for yourself Lauren Kessler’s pretty much perfect “I Love the Rain.”

(Thanks to Ms. Kessler for being very generous about my belated attempt to secure permission for use of this essay. She suggested that she would be more comfortable with a link to the site, but since it had already been published here that she was fine with it remaining on the blog. However, I believe in respecting the initial wishes of the author, and I apologize for my zeal in getting her words out there in my own way. By directing you, dear Reader, to her site I hope, and I'm sure she does too, you may find other things to read and think about that are as compelling to you as "I Love the Rain" is to me.)