Chillers

The clouds are coming farther south each day. Today, as hours passed, they filled more and more of the sky, but a few patches of blue managed to survive until just before nightfall. Then, as the vast and rumpled darkness blotted out the stars, there was distant thunder, and a few raindrops fell. A single cicada continued to trill for a while despite the air's chill, but eventually there was only stillness. There might be real rain by tomorrow. I think it's finally soup season. Must make soup.


Also, today was the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik, the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. Of all the things that Americans of 1957 feared would result from the development of that little beeping device, I doubt that a single one of them foresaw what was truly the greatest threat: the hundreds of awful television channels which satellites would eventually make available to everyone everywhere. Had anyone in 1957 been granted a vision of the future, and a glimpse of the television programming which would engulf the world, I think they'd have done their best to shoot buggery Sputnik down, even at the risk of starting a nuclear war. It's too late now, of course, unless somebody discovers how to travel back in time.


Now traveling through time the other way too fast. Late again.