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Even those who don't live in the Southeast, or Georgia in particular, have certainly heard about the ongoing drought in Atlanta and all of North Georgia. Yep, no rainy nights in Georgia for a long time now. It's been big news since midsummer, and will continue to be big news as the coming dry winter further lowers lake and reservoir levels in the area. Georgia's Republican governor, Sonny Perdue, made headlines yesterday by holding a prayer service on the Capitol steps, a supposedly interdenominational ceremony of praying for the much-needed rain. He apparently didn't invite the Cherokees, but they had beaten him to it a week earlier by holding a much-less-pubicized ceremony themselves. Rain dances feature in most native cultures of arid lands, on this and other continents. The urge to contact forces of nature and plead with them on behalf of a parched and desperate people is one I can easily understand.

Ironically enough, one of the causes of this drought is the hurricane season that never materialized this summer. None of the storms that entered the Caribbean made it into the Southeastern states which this year were actually hoping for landfall. As climate change reaches closer and closer to home, we'll have to realize that there is no longer any "usual" prediction that can be made about our weather, in this or any other country. In the Southeast, Georgia is not alone in its plight: Alabama and Florida also badly need rain, and in fact, if Georgia and Florida were countries with their own armed forces, we might soon be seeing a regional resource war break out over the water shortage situation. Again, with some irony, one of the reasons Florida needs the water flow that Georgia wants to restrict is for a coal-fired power plant. Ah yes, coal-fired power plants....one of the biggest causes of global climate change, let's keep those suckers blowin'.

I checked the weather forecast for Atlanta a few minutes ago, and there is, in fact, a sixty percent chance of some rain tonight. Literally a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but perhaps both the Protestants and the Cherokees can take some credit for it?