Clouds

Anyone spending a lot of time outdoors starts to appreciate clouds. Here's a neighborhood sunset photo; the other is looking across Florida Bay from the Overseas Highway.


There's a Cloud Appreciation Society in the UK (and members worldwide) with a photo gallery of spectacular cloud formations. (What is a "fallstreak hole?")









The CAS made news last week by petitioning for a new category of cloud: Asperatus. The BBC explains it with a slide show here.

I read the CAS "manifesto" and decided to join:

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those ofa person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked. They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen: Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!