Yes, indeed it does! Last night as I lurked in America’s premier urban park, the wind, while a great deal more relaxed than earlier in the day when it was tossing trees down and ripping the shingles off roofs that are gettin’ old, like me, was never-the-less going over me like Harvey Weinstein with a new actress. I had plenty of clothing on, mind you, but it seemed every gap and every seam was under constant assault by the grabby midwestern wind.
I can tell you for a fact, that in Virginia, where I spent my middle and high school years, the weather was calm and gentlemanly, said “Y’all” a lot and looked like one of the Smith Brothers. It wasn’t until my first journey to the City of the French King that I got a taste of the howling gales of the great American midwest. I stopped at a gas station in the middle of the Illinois wasteland and was immediately escorted from my car by a blast of frigid arctic air. April in Richmond was usually warm (one such day the Capitol of the Confederacy was warmer even than Death Valley, in that other state, way out west), so it was a shock to feel such a blast on a day in the mid 40’s of fahrenheit mercury action. Little did I know that such a capricious climate was the hallmark of my new home.
Fast forward to tonight. There is plenty of light in most parts of the park. So much, in fact, that I had to take the ISO setting on my camera down to 100 to catch the movements of the trees as they were beaten by the wind. The sodium vapor lights cast a lurid glare on the park - an orange glow likely to be seen thousands of light years away by implacably hostile alien civilizations far more advanced than our own and dedicated to enslaving inferior races and eating their pets. Fortunately, tonight our fair park (1904 to be exact) is shrouded by a comforting curtain of protective water vapor, rendering the sophisticated technology of other sentient beings impotent of detecting my presence.
It seems no-one else has spotted me either, even though a steady stream of cars parades along the pathways of the park. I linger into the middle hours of the night, seeking solace in the art of photonic capture and preservation.
