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Thursday, July 04, 2002 A short while ago: me, sitting here at the dining room table, noticing that clouds had rolled in, that the breeze had disappeared. The local weather forecasters have warned of thunderstorms later today, the phrase "the calm before the storm" drifted through my thoughts. Which got me thinking about something my sister-in-law had once described to me, from her younger years in Indianapolis, when the air had turned green before a tornado passed through. And that got me remembering a late afternoon/early evening when I was 13 or 14 years old and saw the air turn green. Happened in April on Long Island, where my family lived during the school year. Must have been April -- the warm season hadn't quite asserted itself but the weather had become mild, and though this event took place around 6 p.m. there was still plenty of light. Clouds had made their way in earlier that afternoon, the neighborhood was quiet, quieter than you'd expect it to be at that time of the day, with people arriving home from work, the parkways and main drags congested with traffic. I'd been in our teeny house, happened to glance out the living room window where I saw the air had turned a strange, almost luminescent shade of green. The kind of soft green that I associate with the upsurge of fresh new growth as spring settles in and the world gradually grows warmer. Except that this was the air itself, shining with a muted radiance that made everything look different -– soft, fresh, mysterious. I stepped out of the house into my suddenly unfamiliar neighborhood, walked to the corner, where I found Peter Opramolla staring around at the amazing display. Just him and me, no one else. The air had transformed itself yet people weren't running out into the street to gaze about, call back and forth across small front lawns about the strangeness of it all. In fact, the neighborhood seemed uncharacteristically quiet, which just reinforced the odd, hushed, heightened quality of the event. Peter was two years older, with a mature, self-contained air. We ran in vastly different circles, knew each other hardly at all. And we got to talking, began getting acquainted, one of the first instances in this lifetime of mine when someone older spent time with me like that. The air shone softly around us, a distinct, luminous green that gradually faded as we talked, growing more and more muted until we found ourselves standing out in an ordinary overcast evening, when we finally said so long and returned to our respective homes. The overcast here on my hilltop in northern Vermont has lightened a bit, though thunder rumbles faintly off in the distance. The color green is all around, just about everywhere but in the air. Being out here away from towns/villages, there's been no real sense that it's July 4th. No crowds of people, no fireworks, no sounds of barbecues or games of softball. I'll be heading into Montpelier later to go to a film. The town's official July 4th activities took place yesterday evening, but there'll be people around, there'll be restaurants open, there'll be families out walking and ice cream and red, white and blue bunting. Have a good holiday. rws 3:05 PM [+]
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