Cloud Spotting

 Gavin Pretor-Pinney, is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society.  If it sounds a bit airey-fairey, it is, but in a good way. 

On a day when nothing has gone right and I feel like I have not only not accomplished anything, but have perhaps gone backward, I took a rather boring picture of the dark storm clouds hovering over the hills opposite us. happened across a story about this delightful Englishman in the newspaper. Oxford educated, he has written a book called the Cloudspotter's Guide. He is currently in the  US giving a series of talks on clouds, one of which is in Santa Rosa. Alas, a bit of online research reveals that it is sold out. 

...And it is  no wonder that his talks are sold out...I heard him on the radio yesterday, and he is a delightful antidote to all that seems to be wrong with the world today. He says that lying back and looking at the clouds justifies doing nothing.... it is the perfect antidote to all the devices to which many of us have become slaves. He has even 'discovered a new type of cloud which he calls 'aspiratus undulatus', the first new official cloud classification in 63 years, mainly because he had the persistence to usher his new discovery through the stuffy offices of the 'Cloud Atlas' the definitive source of all that is cloud like.

If more people looked 'aimlessly at the sky', he believes, psychoanalysis bills would be slashed, and creativity unleashed. He refers to the clouds in the numerous churches of Rome, where he lived on sabbatical for a few months, as 'the sofas of the gods'. He went to Rome on sabbatical because of the dependable blue skies, but in the end, he said, he missed the clouds of English skies....

For 7 pounds, you can obtain a lifetime membership in The Cloud Appreciation Society.