Doesn't Take a Weatherman

The evening sun was warm as I walked to the car this evening but as I got closer to home, the charcoal clouds started marching in out of the west. If they had been in Colorado they would have been snow clouds. But here in Alabama, it usually means a slow cold rain is moving in to soak the ground and make it more likely that the autumn leaves will put on a show.
I rode by the library this evening and checked out a bunch of music CD's. Things I had never heard before and things I had. One CD was Bob Dylan's "The Times They are a Changin'". There are songs on that CD that make the hair on my arm stand up. "Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a song about desperation and the things a person will do when pushed over the edge. "With God on Our Side" is an anti-war anthem that makes you stop and think no matter which way you lean regarding war.
I also listened to the sound track to the movie Elibethtown. It is a remarkable selection of songs, that in my mind, really made that movie special.
A good song will pull things from your past and flood your senses with sounds, images, and smells that are so close to real you can't tell the difference.
The music and the gray clouds made me remember the fall of 1971. My friend Kirk Trachy had invited me to go to his house in New Hampshire over a long weekend. His sister gave us a lift to an early evening football game at a local park. On the ride over, Bob Dylan's "subterranean Homesick Blues" came on the radio. The clouds much like the ones today were moving in from the northwest and tiny snow flakes began to fall on the windshield....."you don't need a weatherman, to know which way the wind blows."